Preamble

The House met at a Quarter before Three of the Clock, Mr. SPEAKER in the Chair.

Oral Answers to Questions — PASSPORTS AND VISAS.

Sir HARRY BRITTAIN: 1.
asked the Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs if he can state which countries now reciprocate with Great Britain in regard to the mutual abolition of the visa on passports for their respective nationals; whether he is aware of any additional foreign land prepared to follow this example; and what steps, if any, are being taken by His Majesty's Government to eliminate this restriction upon the travelling public?

The UNDER-SECRETARY of STATE for FOREIGN AFFAIRS (Mr. Ronald McNeill): France, Belgium and Luxemburg now reciprocate. The Swiss Government have so far concluded no reciprocal arrangement with His Majesty's Government, but they admit British subjects, other than those proceeding for employment or permanent residence into Switzerland, without requirement of a Swiss visa on their passports. His Majesty's Government have submitted proposals for the mutual abolition of visas to certain other foreign Governments, with whom negotiations are still proceeding.

Captain Viscount CURZON: Cannot something be done through the League of Nations to secure the abolition of the visa?

Mr. McNEILL: I will convey that suggestion to the right quarter.

Sir H. BRITTAIN: When does the hon. Gentleman expect to hear from the other Governments?

Mr. McNEILL: I cannot say.

Oral Answers to Questions — NAVAL ARMAMENTS (WASHINGTON TREATY).

Colonel WEDGWOOD: 2.
asked the Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs what countries have as yet ratified the decisions as to the reduction of naval armaments taken at the Washington Conference over a year ago; and whether he has any information as to the present attitude towards ratification of the French Government or Parliament?

Mr. McNEILL: The United States, Japan and Great Britain are now in a position to proceed to the deposit of their ratifications in accordance with the terms of the Treaty. I have no official information as to the present attitude of the French Government towards ratification.

Colonel WEDGWOOD: Then we are to understand that neither the French nor the Italian Governments have ratified them?

Mr. McNEILL: That is so.

Viscount CURZON: 12.
asked the First Lord of the Admiralty which of the signatories have so far ratified the Treaty of Washington and which have not; and what steps have been taken up to date to dispose of ships condemned under the Washington Treaty in Great Britain, the United States, and Japan?

The FINANCIAL SECRETARY to the ADMIRALTY (Commander Eyres-Monsell): The Treaty of Washington has been ratified by the United States of America, Japan and this country, but not yet by France or Italy. Eight British capital ships rendered useless for war purposes have already been sold to, and removed by, shipbreaking firms for breaking up. Six more have been rendered incapable of further warlike service, and two more will have been similarly dealt with by the end of next month. So far as is known, the United States and Japan have not actually disposed of ships except possibly obsolete ships which would hive been disposed of in the ordinary course. I may add that until the Treaty has been ratified by all the Powers, none of them are bound to dispose of any vessels.

Viscount CURZON: Is not a very serious situation disclosed in that it means every ship will be reduced to scrap except the "Lion." whereas the United States and France have so far done nothing?

Commander EYRES-MONSELL: No, Sir. I think it is right that this country should give a lead in good faith, and also that we should be the first country to show our intention, in the spirit and in the letter, of carrying out this great Treaty for the limitation of armaments.

Sir JAMES REMNANT: Will the hon. and gallant Gentleman give the names of the vessels that have been sold, the names of the firms who have bought the ships, and the prices paid?

Commander EYRES-MONSELL: I should be glad to do so, if my hon. Friend will communicate with me.

Sir A. SHIRLEY BENN: Now that the intentions have been shown, will the hon. Member undertake that no other ships shall be dealt with until the other countries have taken similar action?

Commander EYRES-MONSELL: Yes, Sir.

Mr. PRINGLE: Is it not the case that the ships that have been scrapped were useless in any case?

Viscount CURZON: 13.
asked the First Lord of the Admiralty what is the present relative strength of the navies of Great Britain, United States, and Japan in capital ships; and when are the capital ships already approved by Parliament to be laid down, in view of the fact that under the Washington Treaty they have to be commenced before 31st December?

Commander EYRES-MONSELL: The answer to the first part of the question as regards completed capital ships is

Great Britain:

23, of which one is still due to be scrapped on ratification of the Washington Agreement.

United States of America:

26, of which eight are similarly due to be scrapped under the Agreement.

Japan:

15, of which five are due to be scrapped.

The United States have 15 capital ships in various stages of completion, of which under the Agreement only two are to be completed as battleships and two allocated as aircraft carriers. Japan has four capital ships building, of which two have been allocated as aircraft carriers, and two will be scrapped. As regards the second part of the question, I would refer try Noble and gallant Friend to
the reply given by the First Lord to the hon. Members for Ecclesall and Devonport on the 27th November.

Sir C. KINLOCH-COOKE: Is there anything in the Washington arrangement that prevents our building cruisers in the Royal yards?

Mr. SPEAKER: The hon. Member had better put that question down.

Sir C. KINLOCH-COOKE: I think that it arises on this question.

Commander BELLAIRS: Is no further progress being made with the ships which are to be scrapped by the United States and which are not completed?

Commander EYRES-MONSELL: I believe that that is so.

Oral Answers to Questions — SOUTH MANCHUR1AN RAILWAY COMPANY (BRITISH CLAIM).

Commander BELLAIRS: 3.
asked the Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether he is aware that P. Heath and Company have been kept out of a large sum of money due to them from the South Manchurian Railway Company for steel plates ordered through them by the railway company during the War; that the railway company repudiated this contract after the Armistice, and are endeavouring to evade payment by protracted legal proceedings which may go on for several years; and whether, having regard to the relations of this railway company with the Japanese Government, diplomatic representations may be made on the detrimental effect of this repudiation on Japanese credit?

Mr. McNEILL: I understand that Messrs. P. Heath and Company's claim is not directly against the South Manchurian Railway Company, but against another Japanese firm, Messrs. Nishikawa and Company; and that Messrs. Heath have instituted proceedings against this firm in the Japanese Courts. His Majesty's Ambassador at Tokyo has been for a long time past giving such attention and assistance as he properly can to Messrs. Heath and Company's case; and was again instructed recently to do his best to expedite proceedings.

Commander BELLAIRS: Will my hon. Friend make fresh inquiries, and he will find that the claim is against the South Manchurian Railway, and the broker is merely being put in as a decoy by the company?

Mr. McNEILL: That is exactly the point that is at issue in the Courts.

Oral Answers to Questions — MONTENEGRO.

Mr. MOREL: 5.
asked the Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether the continued occupation of Montenegro by Serbian troops and the administration of that country by Serbian officers has the approval of His Majesty's Government; whether any treaty or convention to which His Majesty's Government is a party is in existence whereby the sovereign independence of Montenegro has been abrogated; if so, whether the text of such treaty or convention can be laid upon the Table of the House; and whether, in the event of no such treaty or convention being in existence, His Majesty's Government will use its position on the Council of the League of Nations to press for an inquiry into the conditions now prevailing in Montenegro, and will use its influence to restore to the people of that country their sovereign independence recognised under treaties to which previous British Governments were signatory parties?

Mr. McNEILL: As Montenegro forms an integral part of the Kingdom of the Serbs. Croats and Slovenes, His Majesty's Government are not called upon to express any opinion concerning the disposal of the country's troops within the State. The answer to parts 2, 3 and 4 is in the negative.

Lieut.-Commander KENWORTHY: Does my hon. Friend agree personally with this opinion of His Majesty's Government?

Mr. McNEILL: The question is conceived in the policy of the Government. If my hon. Friend is interested in my personal opinions, he must ascertain them privately.

Mr. MOREL: Since when has Montenegro formed a portion of the Serb-Croat and Slovene Kingdom?

Mr. McNEILL: That is a fait accompli which was accepted by His Majesty's Government and the Allied Governments.

Mr. NOEL BUXTON: Will the hon. Member lay on the Table the reports of His Majesty's Minister at Belgrade on the condition of Montenegro?

Mr. McNEILL: I will inquire if that can be done.

Oral Answers to Questions — PEACE TREATIES.

GERMANY (TAXES ON BRITISH VISITORS).

Commander BELLA IRS: 6.
asked the Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether he is aware that, although Germany agreed under the Treaty of Versailles to treat, our citizens on an equal footing with German citizens, municipalities such as Berlin and Baden-Baden lay special taxes on British visitors and municipal taxes on their hotel rooms, while in Potsdam and Thuringia special taxes are levied on British subjects; and what steps are being taken to check these breaches of the Treaty?

Mr. McNEILL: I would refer the hon. and gallant Member to the answer which T gave on this subject on 27th instant to the Noble Lord the Member for South Battersea (Viscount Curzon).

INTERNATIONAL LABOUR CONVENTIONS.

Lord H. CAVENDISH-BENTINCK: 76.
asked the Minister of Labour whether, in view of the fact that the time allowed under the Treaty of Versailles for the discussion and consideration of the Draft Conventions adopted at Geneva in 1921 has now expired, he will state whether the Government has arrived at decisions regarding the action to be taken concerning these Conventions; and, if so, whether he will inform the House what these decisions are?

The MINISTER of LABOUR (Sir Montague Barlow): The Conventions and recommendations adopted at Geneva in 1921 are still under the consideration of His Majesty's Government. I would point out that under the Treaty there is an extended period which, in fact, does not expire till May, 1923.

FRANCE AND GERMANY.

Mr. RAMSAY MacDONALD: (by Private Notice) asked the Prime Minister whether he has any information to give to the House regarding the action which the French Government contemplates in the event of a failure to come to a financial agreement with Germany; whether any communications have now passed between His Majesty's Government and the Government of France on this subject; and, if so, whether any statement regarding them can be made?

The PRIME MINISTER: No, Sir. We have received no information as to the proposals of the French Government in the circumstances indicated, but discussion is now taking place as to a preliminary meeting of the Allied Prime Ministers.

Mr. MacDONALD: Will that meeting be soon? Will it be while the Lausanne Conference is still sitting?

The PRIME MINISTER: I think so. Communications have been made to me on the subject, and I have made the request that, if possible, it should be postponed until after Christmas.

Oral Answers to Questions — RUSSIA.

MRS. STAN HARDING.

Sir BURTON CHADWICK: 7.
asked the Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether His Majesty's Government is in possession of information to the effect that Mrs. Marguerite Harrison was arrested by the Soviet authorities as an American spy and obtained her release by consenting to act as a Soviet spy and, further, to the effect that in her capacity of Soviet informer she was responsible for the false imprisonment of Mrs. Stan Harding, a British journalist; and whether His Majesty's Government has taken any steps to secure redress from the United States Government for the misdeeds of its agent?

Mr. McNEILL: Reports of the nature indicated have reached His Majesty's Government, but sufficient evidence has not been forthcoming to prove how far they are accurate.

Sir B. CHADWICK: Is the hon. Gentleman aware that this lady is nearly exhausted, physically, mentally, and financially, in pressing this claim on the British Government; and will he receive a deputation consisting of representatives of the Institute of Journalists, the National Union of Journalists, the National Council of Women of Great Britain and Ireland, and the Society of Women Journalists?

Mr. McNEILL: The hon. Member knows that I and the Government are entirely in sympathy with this lady, and if he will see me privately I will see whether that can be done.

SOVIET GOVERNMENT (RECOGNITION).

Colonel WEDGWOOD: 45.
asked the Prime Minister the terms on which His Majesty's Government is prepared to recognise the Soviet Government of Russia?

The PRIME MINISTER (Mr. Bonar Law): The main conditions are the recognition of debts, restitution of property or effective compensation and cessation from political propaganda.

Mr. CLYNES: Has any answer whatever been received from Russia since these conditions were laid down at the Hague Conference?

The PRIME MINISTER: I must have notice of that question. I do not recall any.

Commander BELLAIRS: Is it the settled policy of His Majesty's Government not to meddle in the internal affairs of any country?

AUSTRIA (LOANS).

Sir H. BRITTAIN: 8.
asked the Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs how many and which European countries have advanced loans to Austria during the past 12 months, and in what amounts, respectively; and hew many and which countries, if any, are to be associated with the British Government in the proposed forthcoming loan?

The CHANCELLOR of the EXCHEQUER (Mr. S. Baldwin): I understand that the following sums have been placed at the disposal of Austria by the Governments shown below, in addition to the amount of £2,250,000 advanced by His Majesty's Government:

France
55,000,000 francs.


Italy
70,000,000 lire.


Czecho-Slovakia
500,000,000 Czech crowns.

The Governments which have so far agreed to share in the new guarantee under the League of Nations' scheme are those of Great Britain, France, Italy, Czecho-Slovakia, Spain, Belgium and Switzerland.

Sir H. BRITTAIN: Will these advances be in proportion to the population of each country, or on what basis will they be arranged?

Mr. BALDWIN: A Bill will be introduced this Session dealing with the whole matter, and I shall be able to make a statement on that occasion.

Mr. PRINGLE: Can the right hon. Gentleman express these sums in terms of sterling?

Mr. BALDWIN: My hon. Friend is quite capable of doing that for himself.

Mr. PRINGLE: Is it not a fact that hon. Members cannot put them into terms of sterling because they do not know the dates for the rates of exchange?

Mr. WISE: What is the security for these loans?

Mr. BALDWIN: I must ask for notice of that question.

Oral Answers to Questions — ROYAL NAVY.

PRIVATE DOCKYARDS (RECONDITIONING).

Mr. FOOT: 9.
asked the First Lord of the Admiralty whether any public moneys have been advanced for the purpose of reconditioning the slips in any private yards for the purpose of enabling war ships to be constructed in such private yards?

Commander EYRES-MONSELL: No, Sir.

PRIZE MONEY.

Mr. HARBORD: 10.
asked the First Lord of the Admiralty when the remaining instalment of naval prize money will be paid?

Commander EYRES-MONSELL: The payment of the final instalment of naval prize money, which commenced in April last, is now approaching completion. Claims have already been invited from all interested, except those whose names begin with the letters A, B, E and S. These letters will be opened for payment within the next month.

Mr. HARBORD: Will the hon. Member, in view of the failure of the herring fishing, not only this year but for the past two years, whereby great distress is caused—[HON. MEMBERS: "Order, order!"] I think it is a legitimate question. [HON. MEMBERS: "You are reading it!"] Will he take such steps as would result—[HON. MEMBERS: "Order, order!"]

Mr. SPEAKER: If the question is carefully written, it had better be handed in.

Sir BERTRAM FALLE: 19.
asked the Financial Secretary to the Admiralty if he is aware that in the, case of those naval ratings who were killed in action during the late War before completing the full time for prize money, their representatives received the full prize money, first and second issues; and if he will consider the claim of those men who, through no fault of their own, were invalided early in the War after active service or who happened to be ashore and were killed in a land action to such full prize money?

Commander EYRES-MONSELL: The regulations for the award of prize money provide that the maximum shares which could have been earned may be granted to those who, before completing the qualifying period of service at sea, died or were invalided as a result of wounds or injuries sustained on such service, or who, having had at least 10 months' qualifying time, died or were invalided on account of disease attributable to the Service. Prize money, however, is an award made solely in respect of services at sea, being derived from the proceeds of prizes captured by His Majesty's ships, and consequently services in land operations or casualties sustained on such employment do not give any title to the grant.

CORNWALL MEMORIAL TABLET.

Viscount CURZON: 11.
asked the First Lord of the Admiralty whether he is aware that the memorial tablet to Cornwall, V.C., erected in H.M.S. "Chester," was sold with the ship when she was sent to be broken up; and whether steps can now be taken to secure this tablet in the interest of the nation and for its safe custody in future?

Commander EYRES-MONSELL: Instructions were given for the removal of all such mementoes before the ship was sold, and I understand that it had been removed from its place before the ship was prepared for sale. I am making further inquiries with a view to its recovery and preservation.

Viscount CURZON: Is there any truth in the report that the tablet is now in a shipbreaker's office at Netley?

Commander EYRES-MONSELL: I sent a wire this morning to find out, but have not yet received a reply.

OLD WARSHIPS (BREAKING UP).

Commander BELLAIRS: 15.
asked the First Lord of the Admiralty whether he can state the financial results of the attempt to break up old warships in the State-owned dockyards?

Commander EYRES-MONSELL: Three destroyers and four submarines were broken up in the Royal yards between 1918 and the present year. The net proceeds have amounted to £24,798.

Commander BELLAIRS: Is that after deducting all costs?

Commander EYRES-MONSELL: Yes. That is the profit. But these ships were broken up in the years immediately succeeding the War, when scrap was of considerable value. It is no longer so.

Major WHELER: Even then, would it not be advisable to break up those small ships and give us some useful employment rather than let ships go to German breaking firms?

Commander EYRES-MONSELL: We have given every possible facility for ship-breaking firms to break up our ships. I have personally taken every possible means of doing so.

Mr. TREVELYAN THOMSON: 16.
asked the Financial Secretary to the Admiralty what was the difference between the amount of the tender accepted for the breaking up in Germany of the battleship "Hibernia" and the highest tender for breaking up at home; and, in view of the large amount of unemployment amongst the shipyard workers in this country, will he see that in future such work is not sent abroad?

Commander EYRES-MONSELL: The "Hibernia" formed part of a block of ships sold a year ago to a British firm for breaking up in Germany at a time when the facilities in this country for breaking up capital ships were insufficient to cope with the immense number of vessels which the Admiralty had to get rid of. The prices obtainable from continental buyers are considerably higher than those paid in this country, but it has been the policy of the Admiralty to fill the shipbreaking yards in the United Kingdom to their
utmost capacity. In order to relieve unemployment direct sales of ships have for some time been and will continue to be restricted generally to buyers who will undertake to break them up in this country.

PLYMOUTH DOCKYARD (WAGES).

Viscountess ASTOR: 17.
asked the Financial Secretary to the Admiralty what rates of weekly wrage have been paid to the lowest grade of adult labour in the Royal Dockyard at Plymouth since January, 1914; and what the present rate is under the recently revised scale of dockyard wages?

Commander EYRES-MONSELL: In January, 1914, the weekly rate for labourers was 23s. The rate was increased to 24s. a week from 1st October, 1914. By a series of temporary advances made over the period March, 1915-June, 1920, 39s. 6d. was added to the rate, and from October, 1917, 12½ per cent, bonus was paid on the total rate. The temporary increases, including the 12½ per cent, bonus, have been gradually reduced, as from July, 1921, and, with the last 4s. reduction taking effect from the 19th November, the total amount of the temporary increases is now 17s. a week, making the present pay of labourers 41s. a week.

ROYAL DOCKYARDS (PAID HOLIDAY).

Major Sir B. FALLE: 18.
asked the Financial Secretary to the Admiralty if he is aware that the afternoon of 15th November was given as a paid holiday to the workers of His Majesty's dockyards, and that all men absent through sickness, injury, or leave of absence have to forfeit this payment; and if ho will remedy this?

Commander EYRES-MONSELL: In order to enable dockyard employés to record their votes without causing conges-lion at the polling booths in the evening, permission was given, in accordance with the usual practice adopted at General Elections, for the workpeople, actually working to be absent from work on the afternoon of the polling day, 15th November, without loss of wages. It was specifically laid down that the half-day was not to be regarded as a dockyard half-holiday, and the Admiralty cannot accept the contention that employés who would
not in any case have been at work in the afternoon should be paid for that afternoon.

PENSION PAYMENTS.

Major Sir B. FALLE: 20.
asked the Financial Secretary to the Admiralty if he is aware that naval and marine ratings invalided with a disability pension are kept waiting lengthy periods before the first payment of pension; and if he can see to it that future invalids be retained in royal naval hospitals until pensions are authorised or to be paid, or otherwise agree with the Minister, of Pensions to expedite such pensions?

Commander EYRES-MONSELL: Men who are invalided are granted pay and allowances for 28 days subsequent to the date of invaliding. This period is normally sufficient for the man's claim to disability compensation to be settled, and retention in hospital to await pension documents is not, therefore, considered necessary. I am satisfied that every effort is already made to award pensions as expeditiously as possible, but if my hon. and gallant Friend will let me have details of the case he has in mind I shall be pleased to make further inquiry.

Oral Answers to Questions — UNEMPLOYMENT.

ISLE OF WIGHT.

Sir EDGAR CLARKE: 14.
asked the First Lord of the Admiralty whether, in view of the amount of unemployment in Cowes and East Cowes, Isle of Wight, he can send an immediate order for naval construction or naval repair to those towns?

Commander EYRES-MONSELL: The firms in the district referred to, that are on the Admiralty lists, are invited to tender for all new work suitable to their capacity, and orders have only in the last few days been placed for work that will take four to five months to complete.

Mr. WHEATLEY: In order to provide what hon. Members opposite call "useful employment," would the hon. Member take into account the possibility of sinking two or three battleships?

CASUAL LABOURERS.

Lieut.-Commander KENWORTHY: 21.
asked the Minister of Labour whether he
is aware of the hardship and inconvenience caused to dock and other casual labourers by the present method of administrating the Unemployment Insurance Act; if he is aware that where a man has signed on for two or three days in the week as out of work, he actually loses by accepting employment on the third or fourth day; and whether he will endeavour to arrive at some other arrangement?

Mr. A. T. DAVIES: 44.
asked the Minister of Labour whether, in the case of men working two and three days or only part of the week, the whole of the unemployment allowance is withheld; and whether, seeing that it is a national advantage for men to work part of a week, he will consider whether a proportional part of the weekly allowance for the unemployed could be allowed to such part-time workers?

Sir M. BARLOW: In accordance with Section 7 (2, b) of the Unemployment Insurance Act, 1920, persons working on one or two days only in the week can ordinarily qualify for unemployment benefit in respect of the other days, but not those working on three days in the week. Applicants do not lose their tight to unemployment benefit for previous days by accepting employment for one day or two days, provided that they are then unemployed for at least two days. The rules in this connection cannot be altered without fresh legislation, but I am having their working examined with the object of seeing whether any amendment can justifiably be proposed.

Lieut.-Commander KENWORTHY: If something can be done by legislation, would it be possible to bring in a short agreed Bill this Session to get rid of these anomalies?

Sir M. BARLOW: The difficulties involved, as my hon. and gallant Friend knows, are very considerable. We have had the matter under consideration for some time and I cannot hold out any hope that we shall come to an immediate solution, and therefore I think that it would be unfair to suggest legislation in this short Session, but I am pressing inquiry into the matter and I shall be happy to have another word with my hon. and gallant Friend about it.

Mr. SEXTON: Is it not a fact that notwithstanding the six days' qualifying period, there are cases of men idle six days of the week who, because they are employed overtime for two hours, after the end of the six days, are, though compelled to pay contributions, disqualified? [HON. MEMBERS: "Speech!"] Will the right hon. Gentleman undertake to give facilities to have an inquiry to remove the anomalies now existing?

Sir M. BARLOW: If my hon. Friend can assist me in an inquiry, with employers and employed, to come to some solution of this difficulty, I shall be only too pleased.

Mr. SEXTON: It is a very important question, and—[HON, MEMBERS: "Order!"].

HULL (BENEFIT PAYMENTS).

Lieut.-Commander KENWORTHY: 22.
asked the Minister of Labour if he is aware of the long periods spent by unemployed workmen in Hull and other centres in waiting in queues for the unemployed insurance payments on Fridays; and whether he will make arrangements for payments to be made to the men in smaller batches on every day of the week, except Sundays, instead of the present arrangement?

Sir M. BARLOW: In all Exchanges at which there are large numbers of unemployed, applicants are divided into half-hourly or hourly groups, and by this means queues have, in nearly all cases, been eliminated. At Hull there are special difficulties owing to limited premises, but steps are being taken to improve the accommodation, and meanwhile I am having arrangements made which will, I hope, reduce the time spent by applicants. Payment is already, made on two days of the week, and with the adjustments of accommodation proposed I hope this should be sufficient.

Lieut.-Commander KENWORTHY: In thanking my right hon. Friend for the answer I beg to give notice that I will raise the matter on Monday on the adjournment, when an opportunity occurs for discussing these points.

BUILDING TRADES.

Mr. T. THOMSON: 23.
asked the Minister of Labour the numbers in the
various branches of the building trade who were unemployed in October and the total amount of unemployment benefit paid to them?

Sir M. BARLOW: The number of unemployed building operatives on 23rd October, 1922, as shown by unemployment books lodged at Employment Exchanges, was 118,739. I am circulating particulars in the OFFICIAL REPORT. It is estimated that for the four pay-weeks falling within the month of October these persons received about £260,000 in benefit.

Mr. T. THOMSON: Would my right hon. Friend, in his capacity as Minister of Health, consult himself as to whether it would not be more profitable to spend that money on building houses rather than on paying men for doing nothing?

Sir M. BARLOW: As my hon. Friend knows, the matter is a very difficult one, but it is under consideration.

Following are the particulars promised:


Carpenters
11,785


Bricklayers
5,200


Masons
1,773


Slaters
471


Plasterers
1,564


Painters
18,840


Plumbers
3,584


Other skilled trades and labourers
75,522


Total
118,739

TIN MINERS, CORNWALL.

Mr. FOOT: 30.
asked the Minister of Labour the number of tin miners who are at present unemployed in Cornwall; and the average weekly amount which is being paid to such unemployed miners by way of unemployment benefits?

Sir M. BARLOW: The number of persons registered as tin miners and tin streamers at Employment Exchanges in Cornwall at the beginning of November was 1,949. The average weekly payment of unemployment benefit is estimated to be about £1,060.

EMPLOYMENT EXCHANGES.

Mr. LOUGHER: 34.
asked the Minister of Labour if he will state the estimated cost of the maintenance of the Employment Exchanges at the present date, the number of registered unemployed, the
number of genuinely placed cases recorded on the books of the Exchanges during the last three months, and what proportion of those so placed have been due to the efforts of the Employment Exchanges as compared with the total which have secured work through sources other than that of the Employment Exchanges?

Sir M. BARLOW: The estimated cost of the Employment Exchanges and divisional offices for the year 1922–23 is approximately £3,975,000, including rent, stationery, etc., as well as cost of staff. Of this cost about £3,776,000 is attributable to the administration of Unemployment Insurance, including the offering of employment to insured persons, and is paid by the Unemployment Fund. The balance of about £200,000 is paid by the Treasury, and includes the cost of work done by the Exchanges, for example, in connection with the King's Roll scheme and overseas settlement. The number of vacancies filled by the Employment Exchanges during the three months ended 6th November last, exclusive of those in certain casual occupations, was 143,580. I have no means of estimating the number who have secured work through other sources.

INSURANCE.

Mr. BOWERMAN: 35.
asked the Minister of Labour the number of industrial workers insured for sickness and for unemployment, respectively; how many are exempt from payment of contributions for the latter, and the grounds upon which such exemption has been granted: if he will state separately the number of public servants, i.e., civil servants and municipal employés, who are not contributing to Unemployment Insurance; and whether he can give an estimate of the number of salaried persons in industry, commerce, and public services who are not contributing to the maintenance, through insurance, of the compulsorily unemployed?

Sir M. BARLOW: As this reply involves a good many figures I will, with my right hon. Friend's consent, circulate the answer in the OFFICIAL REPORT.

Following is the answer:

The total number of workpeople covered by the Health Insurance scheme is about 15,000,000 and the corresponding
figure for Unemployment Insurance is about 11,500,000. Certificates of exemption have been issued to 33,500 persons either on account of their possessing an independent income of £26 a year, or more, or for other reasons; the employer's contribution is still payable in these cases. In addition, about 450,000 persons on the permanent staffs of local authorities, railways, public utility undertakings and Police authorities have been excepted from Unemployment Insurance. Established civil servants, numbering about 188,000, are not liable to contribute to Unemployment Insurance. It is not possible to state, with any approach to accuracy, the number of salaried persons not subject to compulsory insurance against unemployment.

NANTYGLO, MONMOUTHSHIRE.

Mr. BARKER: 37.
asked the Minister of Labour if he is aware that there is no Employment Exchange at Nantyglo, Monmouthshire; that there are over 1,000 unemployed in this area; that it is a very scattered district; that this is the second winter that these people have had to face unemployment with worn-out clothes and footwear; that they have to go to Brynmawr or Blaina three times per week, very often in heavy rain, to register and to receive their unemployment pay; and will he, to alleviate this suffering as much as possible, take steps to have an Employment Exchange opened at Nantyglo!

Sir M. BARLOW: The number of unemployed men residing in Nantyglo and registered at Brynmawr and Blaina is about 600, and I understand that the greatest distance between their homes and the nearest Employment Office, at Brynmawr or Blaina, is a mile and a half. In these circumstances I do not consider that the opening of a new office would be justified, but it has been arranged that, after the end of the present week, residents at Nantyglo need attend only twice a week for the time being.

PUBLIC HEALTH.

Sir W, de FRECE: 26.
asked the Minister of Labour, as representing the Ministry of Health, whether his medical returns show any increase in public sickness due to unemployment and reduced wages; and, if so, where these evidences are most manifested?

The PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY to the MINISTRY of LABOUR (Major Boyd-Carpenter): Some indication of the amount of sickness of all kinds amongst the employed population of the country is furnished by the returns of expenditure by approved societies on sickness benefit under the National Health Insurance Acts. From these it appears that there was an increase in the number of weeks for which benefit was paid in 1921 as compared with the previous year of 1.4 per cent, in the case of men and 8.4 per cent, in the case of women. Many factors must, however, be borne in mind in making a comparison between the figures for the two years and, in particular, the serious epidemic of influenza about, the end of the year 1921. The material in the possession of the Ministry does not make it possible to state to what extent the increase may have been attributable to the causes referred to by the hon. Member, nor to give comparative figures for different parts of the country.

RELIEF EXPENDITURE.

Mr. DANIEL SOMERVILLE: 38.
asked the Minister of Labour the amount of assistance already afforded schemes of relief through the agency of the Unemployment Grants Committee this winter; and whether any available funds and, if so, how much still remain for this purpose?

Major BOYD-CARPENTER: The Committee have passed schemes for this winter of a capital cost of £4,709,000 and funds are available for further schemes to bring the total to £12,000,000.

Mr. SOMERVILLE: What is the general Cabinet policy on the question of unemployment relief?

Mr. SPEAKER: We shall have that to-morrow.

Lieut.-Commander KENWORTHY: 41.
asked the Minister of Labour what is the total average weekly sum now being paid out in unemployed insurance payments, relief works, and all other means for the relief of the unemployed workers?

Sir M. BARLOW: The weekly sum now being paid in unemployment benefit is about £890,000. The other items cannot be expressed as average weekly sums, at any rate not without elaborate and diffi-
cult inquiry, but a full statement with regard to them will be made at the appropriate time during the Debate on the Address.

Mr. CECIL WILSON: 57.
asked the Minister of Labour whether, in regard to schemes to which the Unemployed Grants Committee has contributed, he can state the total cost of completed schemes, the amount contributed by the Committee, and what amount of the total cost has gone to labour that would otherwise have been unemployed?

Major BOYD-CARPENTER: The total cost of the schemes passed by the Committee is nearly £33,000,000; a large part of this work has been completed, but much is still in hand. The grants in respect of this sum may be estimated at about £10,000,000. Exact information of the amount paid to labour is not available, but it is calculated that, directly and indirectly, about £26,000,000 of the total will have been expended on labour.

INSURANCE BY INDUSTRIES.

Mr. D. SOMERVILLE: 47.
asked the Prime Minister whether the Government intends to consider in the Session of 1923 the introduction of insurance by industries; and whether, in that case, it intends first to establish public inquiry as to the best procedure to be adopted?

The PRIME MINISTER: I do not think there is any possibility of dealing with this subject next year, but it is one in regard to the examination of which preliminary steps are now being taken.

LEICESTER.

Captain ARTHUR EVANS: 54.
asked the Minister of Labour why the six schemes prepared by the Leicester local authorities which would have provided work for a thousand men at present out of employment in that city have been turned down by the Government, especially in view of the fact that unemployment has not decreased in Leicester during the last year; and, in view of the coming winter and the fact that the bad outlook in the shoe trade will tend to increase the numbers of unemployed, will he favourably consider one of the schemes presented by the local authorities which were drawn up at the request of the Ministry?

Major BOYD-CARPENTER: The Unemployment Grants Committee, after fully considering the facts, came to the conclusion that the unemployment in Leicester did not warrant the giving of grants in respect of the schemes. Should unemployment in Leicester increase, the Committee will be fully prepared to reconsider their decision.

Captain EVANS: Would the hon. and gallant Gentleman give me his assurance that in considering these schemes Leicester City should receive a grant in proportion to the number of unemployed in that city?

Major BOYD-CARPENTER: I will give my hon. and gallant Friend the assurance that I will report his desire to my right hon. Friend.

SHEFFIELD.

Mr. C. WILSON: 56.
asked the Minister of Labour, as representing the Ministry of Health, whether he can state for the end of October in 1920, 1921, and 1922 the number of persons per 1,000 of the population who were receiving out relief in the township of Sheffield, the township of Ecclesall, the parish of Tinsley, and in such part of the township or parish of Wortley as is within the boundary of the city of Sheffield?

Major BOYD-CARPENTER: The reply to this question can most conveniently be given in a tabular form, and I propose, with permission, to circulate it in the OFFICIAL REPORT.

Following is the reply:

Separate figures are not available for the four parishes named, but the figures for the Poor Law unions in which the parishes are included are as follows:



Last Saturday in October


Poor Law Union.
1920.
1921.
1922.


Sheffield
8.3
113.2
163.1


Ecclesall Bierlow
3.6
67.4
82.3


Rotherham (including the Parish of Tinsley.
13.5
47.4
40.9


Wortley
6.8
11.8
22.5

YOUNG PERSONS.

Mr. A. T. DAVIES: 55.
asked the Minister of Labour whether, in the cases of youths over school age and between the ages of 15 and 21 years who are unable to obtain work, the general policy of the Ministry is to withhold all unemployment pay if they have not previously been in employment, and to refer them for their maintenance to their parents; whether the question of advancing to such youths some unemployment allowance has been under consideration; whether there are any insuperable objections to such payments to youths who, through no fault of their own, have not been employed; and whether he will consider the question of some relief, especially as the present policy bears hardly on many parents who themselves are in receipt of unemployment allowances?

Sir M. BARLOW: The Unemployment Insurance Acts do not permit of the payment of benefit to youths who have not previously been in employment, and, having regard to the contributory basis of the unemployment insurance scheme, I do not think I should be justified in proposing the legislation which would be necessary before benefit could be paid in such cases.

Mr. LANSBURY: 69.
asked the Minister of Labour how many young persons under the age of 21 were registered as unemployed during the week ending 31st January, 1922, and the week ending 31st October, 1922; and whether, in view of the mental, moral, and physical deterioration such young people must be passing through, he will confer with the Minister of Education as to how best to provide for them suitable facilities for education and recreation?

Sir M. BARLOW: The numbers of boys and girls of ages up to 18 on the Live Registers of Employment Exchanges in Great Britain were 111,138 on 31st January, 1922, and 78,776 on 30th October, 1922. Separate figures cannot be given for those between 18 and 21. The question whether any special steps can be taken for the benefit of unemployed boys and girls is receiving the careful consideration of the Government.

Mr. LANSBURY: Will not the right hon. Gentleman hurry up the consideration of this question in view of the fact
that at each school ending stage another set of boys and girls are tumbled out on to the labour market?

Viscountess ASTOR: Before the right hon. Gentleman answers that question, will he consider any money spent on these children not as waste but as national economy?

Sir M. BARLOW: The considerations contained in the two supplementary questions are present in my mind, and any money that is devoted to this object will certainly be used to the best possible purpose.

Lieut.-Colonel NALL: May I ask what proportion of these young people are girls, and what steps are being taken in view of the shortage of domestic servants?

Mr. SPEAKER: That; is too large a matter for a supplementary question.

GREATER LONDON AREA.

Mr. GILBERT: 60.
asked the Minister of Labour the number of unemployed men and women in the county of London registered during the last four weeks; and whether the numbers show an increase or decrease compared with the same weeks last year?

Sir M. BARLOW: During the four weeks ended 6th November, 1922, 68,860 men and 18,633 women registered themselves at Employment Exchanges in the Greater London area, as compared with—and I would ask the House to pay particular attention to this—97,697 men and 31,370 women in the four weeks ended 4th November, 1921.

Mr. GILBERT: 61.
asked the Minister of Labour the names of the six industries in London in which the greatest number of unemployed are registered at the present time; and will he state if unemployment is generally bad in these industries at this time of the year?

Sir M. BARLOW: The six industries in London in which the greatest number of unemployed are registered at the present time are building, engineering and ironfounding, the distributive trades, dock labour, road transport (other than trams and omnibuses), and food and drink manufacture. With the exception of the building trades, these trades do not usually suffer to any marked extent
from seasonal depression at this time of the year.

Mr. HARRIS: Will the right hon. Gentleman call the attention of the Minister of Health, whom he also represents, to the fact that there is a large number out of work in the building trade and that there is a serious shortage of houses in the county of London?

Sir M. BARLOW: I have the best of reasons for knowing that that consideration is present to the mind of my right hon. Friend the Minister of Health.

CHRISTMAS WEEK.

Mr. WHEATLEY: 65.
asked the Minister of Labour whether, in view of the state of destitution to which many families have been brought by prolonged unemployment, he will arrange for the allowances to the unemployed and their dependants being doubled for Christmas week?

Sir M. BARLOW: The rates of unemployment benefit are fixed by statute, and I fear I am unable, therefore, to increase them for Christmas week.

GOODS (PRODUCTION AND DISTRIBUTION).

Mr. WHEATLEY: 66.
asked the Minister of Labour if he will take steps to ascertain whether there is a shortage in this country of any of the goods required to satisfy the needs and comforts of the entire population, with a view to the unemployed workers being organised for the production of such goods; and will he consider, should investigation reveal that there is no shortage but, on the contrary, abundance, how the system of distribution, particularly among the working classes of this country, can be improved so that it may keep pace with production?

Sir M. BARLOW: I have no machinery at my disposal for ascertaining the information required in the first part of the question. As my right hon. Friend the Minister of Agriculture informed the House last Monday, an inquiry as to the distribution of the most important section of consumable goods, namely, foodstuffs, is being taken in hand, and the results of this inquiry will no doubt throw much light on the whole question of the efficiency of the present system of distribution.

Mr. WHEATLEY: In the event of the investigation proving that there is no shortage, may I take it that the Government will depart from the policy of allowing people to starve in the midst of plenty?

Sir M. BARLOW: I do not think that arises out of the question on the Paper.

RELIEF WORK, BIRMINGHAM (WAGES).

Commander OLIVER LOCKER-LAMPSON: 68.
asked the Minister of Labour, as representing the Ministry of Health, whether his Department has refused to allow payment of the full trade union rate of wages to the unemployed engaged on relief work in Birmingham; what is the reason for this; and whether the city council can now be allowed to pay the balance of 25 per cent, to bring up wages to the full amount?

Major BOYD-CARPENTER: It is a condition of a grant by the Unemployment Grants Committee that, where the work is carried out by direct labour, the rate of wages paid for unskilled labour must not, for a probationary period of six months, exceed 75 per cent, of the local authority's rate for unskilled labour. This condition was made after full consideration, and cannot be waived if the grant is to be paid.

Mr. LANSBURY: Is the hon. and gallant Gentleman aware that the Ministry have made exceptions in these eases on the understanding that the men so engaged shall be capable and competent to do the work, and, therefore, capable of earning the money in the ordinary way?

Major BOYD-CARPENTER: I am aware of that fact. My right hon. Friend is considering the whole matter, but it is the considered judgment which I have reported to the House.

INSURANCE FUND.

Mr. HANNON: 71.
asked the Minister of Labour what is the present amount of indebtedness of the Unemployment Insurance Fund; and whether he can present a statement showing the weekly receipts of the fund and the amount paid out weekly in benefits?

Sir M. BARLOW: The amount borrowed by the Unemployment Fund is at present £14,550,000. For the week ending 17th
November, the income of the Unemployment Fund was approximately £847,500, made up as follows:


Contributions by employers and employed
£625,000


Contributions by the State
£222,500


The expenditure for the same week, on unemployment benefit was £888,000, to which should be added about £99,000 for administrative expenses (11 per cent, of the average weekly income), together with £21,000 for interest on the loan and other items, making a total of £1,008,000.

UNINSURED PERSONS.

Mr. HANNON: 72.
asked the Minister of Labour whether he can furnish an estimate of the number of unemployed persons in Great Britain who are not insured against unemployment?

Sir M. BARLOW: I have no material on which to base an estimate of the number of uninsured workpeople who are unemployed. I can only say that the number registered at the Employment Exchanges is about 32,000.

LACE TRADE.

Lord HENRY CAVENDISH-BENTINCK: 74.
asked the Minister of Labour how many men, women, and girls formerly employed in the lace trade and allied industries in the Nottingham and Long Eaton areas are out of employment?

Sir M. BARLOW: At 23rd October the numbers of unemployed persons in the lace trade, as shown by unemployment books lodged at Employment Exchanges, were as follow:

Nottingham Area:

519 men, 5 boys, 383 women and 19 girls.—Total, 926.

Long Eaton Area:

1,032 men, 10 boys, 462 women and 30 girls.—Total, 1,534.

Oral Answers to Questions — HOUSING.

BUILDING PROGRAMME.

Mr. T. THOMSON: 24.
asked the Minister of Labour, as representing the Ministry of Health, the total number of houses completed under the various
housing schemes of the last Parliament, the number of such houses in course of construction, and the number still to be sanctioned?

Major BOYD-CARPENTER: 145,771 houses had been completed by local authorities and public utility societies on the 1st November and 39,145 houses had been completed at that date by private builders under the. Housing (Additional Powers) Act, 1919, making a total of 184,916 houses completed. In addition 3,056 dwellings have been provided by the conversion of huts and hostels. 30,229 houses remain to be completed, and of these 18,347 were in course, of construction on 1st November by local authorities and public utility societies.

Mr. T. THOMSON: In view of the inadequate, number of houses which the Ministry has sanctioned to complete the shortage reported, I beg to give notice that I shall raise this question on the adjournment to-night.

SUBSIDIES.

Sir W. de FRECE: 25.
asked the Minister of Labour, as representing the Ministry of Health, how many municipal authorities have put forward applications for housing subsidies since the House adjourned in August; and what action his Department has taken in each case?

Major BOYD-CARPENTER: During the period referred to applications have, been received from some 170 local authorities. These applications have been reviewed in relation to the urgency of the need, special consideration being given to the populous urban centres where skilled labour is available and to the number of houses already authorised or in hand; and in 52 cases local authorities have been authorised to proceed with further houses within the limits laid down for the assisted scheme. Some 20 other authorities have decided to build without subsidy since the date mentioned by my hon. Friend.

Mr. D. SOMERVILLE: 58.
asked the Minister of Labour, as representing the Ministry of Health, whether the whole of the subsidies under the original housing scheme have now been allocated; what is the number of houses completed under that scheme; whether there is any avoidable delay in completion; what is the
lowest tender received for subsidised construction; and whether the level of economic building has now been reached?

Major BOYD-CARPENTER: Of the 176,000 houses, to which the scheme was limited, 175,400 have been definitely allocated and 546 provisionally allocated. In addition, 39,145 houses have been provided with the aid of the private builders' subsidy. On 1st November last, 145,771 houses had been completed, and I am not aware at the present time of any general avoidable delay in the completion of houses for which contracts have been let. The lowest price for a house, complete with drains, paths, fences and gas and hot water installation, is £297 10s. On the information before me, there is no reason to believe that the cost of building will not continue to fall.

SITES.

Mr. C0LLISON: 53.
asked the Minister of Labour, as representing the Ministry of Health, whether ho can see his way to hand over to local authorities sites required for housing purposes in order to stimulate the building trade, to decrease unemployment, and supply the need for houses?

Major BOYD-CARPENTER: Local authorities have in several cases taken over land acquired under the assisted housing scheme for building purposes at the present market value, and such land has also been disposed of on similar terms to private persons undertaking building. My right hon. Friend is anxious to encourage such arrangements as far as possible.

PRIVTE EXTERPRISE.

Sir ALFRED MOND: 63.
asked the Minister of Labour, as representing the Ministry of Health, whether he intends to take any steps, either through the local authorities, building societies, or otherwise, to encourage private enterprise in the building trade so as to facilitate the purchase of houses for their own use by private individuals?

Major BOYD-CARPENTER: This question is being considered with the general question of housing policy.

Mr. RILEY: Will consideration be given to any applications made to the Minister by working men's building guilds?

LOCAL AUTHORITIES' SCHEMES.

Sir A. MOND: 64.
asked the Minister of Labour, as representing the Ministry of Health, whether he intends to adopt proposals for the further provision of houses by local authorities, with a fixed annual grant to cover part of the loss of rent, in accordance with the scheme framed by his predecessor in office?

Major BOYD-CARPENTER: The proposal to which the right hon. Member refers will be fully considered by the Government in their review of the whole question of housing policy.

Mr. THOMSON: Could the House have the advantage of the information withheld from this side of the House by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Swansea (Sir A. Mond) when he sat on the Treasury Bench, in spite of all our efforts to extract that information from him?

POOR LAW AUTHORITIES (BANK OVERDRAFTS).

Sir W. de FRECE: 27.
asked the Minister of Labour, as representing the Ministry of Health, if there are any boards of guardians who have since the adjournment of this House in August been refused overdrafts by the banks; and what has happened in each of these cases?

Major BOYD-CARPENTER: My right hon. Friend is not aware of any cases of this kind since the adjournment of the House in August.

FOGS, LONDON.

Sir H. BRITTAIN: 32.
asked the Minister of Labour, as representing the Ministry of Health, whether any computation has been made as to the financial loss suffered by the Metropolis, in addition to the effect on the health of its citizens, by the series of fogs during the last fortnight; and what steps it is proposed to take to mitigate this evil?

Major BOYD-CARPENTER: I do not think it is practicable to form any accurate estimate of the financial loss caused by the recent fogs. In reply to the latter part of the question, I will consider the introduction of a Smoke Abatement Bill next Session.

NATIONAL HEALTH INSURANCE ACTS.

Mr. GOULD: 33 and 36.
asked the Minister of Labour, as representing the Ministry of Health, (1) whether, having regard to the present system of administering the Health Insurance Acts, he will now cause a judicial committee of inquiry to be set up to inquire into the whole administration of the Acts, particularly with reference to the panel system:
(2) whether, having regard to the present working of the National Health Insurance Acts, resulting in numerous complaints, and the desirability of securing more adequate benefit and greater facility of administration, an exhaustive inquiry will be made into the whole subject by a competent body with the object of obtaining such recommendations as will confer the greatest benefit upon those for whom the scheme has been designed?

Major BOYD-CARPENTER: The question to which the hon. Member refers will receive the consideration of my right hon. Friend.

Mr. GOULD: Does the hon. and gallant Gentleman realise the amount of discontent existing in the country, and will he press the matter forward quickly?

Major BOYD-CARPENTER: I quite realise the facts.

Oral Answers to Questions — EX-SERVICE MEN.

KING'S ROLL OF HONOUR.

Lieut.-Colonel POWNALL: 31.
asked the Minister of Labour whether his attention has been called to the fact that less than half the municipal authorities in the country are members of the Roll of Honour; and what steps he proposes taking to see that local authorities carry out their moral obligations towards disabled ex-service men?

Sir M. BARLOW: I am fully aware of what I cannot but regard as the disappointing response made by municipal authorities under the Boll of Honour Scheme. As stated in my reply to the hon. Member for West Bromwich, on 27th November, it is proposed to appoint immediately a King's Roll National Council and a number of local King's Roll committees, and the position of
municipal authorities will be among the first of the matters to be dealt with by these bodies.

Lieut.-Colonel POWNALL: Would the right hon. Gentleman consider writing in his official capacity to the municipal authorities with a view of getting them to join the Roll of Honour?

Sir M. BARLOW: I believe that that has already been done, but I thought that we would have real assistance from the King's Roll Committees in this matter.

Mr. WALLHEAD: Does the right hon. Gentleman think that the Government is setting an example of moral rectitude to the municipalities by its own conduct towards ex-service men in other directions?

Sir M. BARLOW: The standard of employment of ex-service men in Government offices is so high that if it was followed all over the country ex-service men would all be absorbed.

Sir W. DAVISON: Will the right hon. Gentleman publish the names of the local authorities which have not joined the King's Roll of Honour?

Sir M. BARLOW: The question of what, I am afraid, must inevitably become a black list has been considered on more than one occasion. I would very much rather make another effort to see whether, as a matter of good will, we cannot carry the local authorities with us.

Sir W. DAVISON: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that a similar answer has been given for more than a year? Has not the time arrived for this list to be published?

MINISTRY OF LABOUR.

Mr. BECKER: 40.
asked the Minister of Labour if he has any intention of replacing the temporary ex-service men now being dismissed from his Department by young men and women who will be on the permanent staff?

Sir M. BARLOW: The services of the temporary ex-service men referred to are being dispensed with owing to diminution of work or because previously-appointed permanent staff is now available to do their work, and it is not proposed to
replace these officers. It should be added that temporary women officers are also being discharged for the same cause

UNEMPLOYMENT, NOTTINGHAM.

Lord H. CAVENDISH-BENTINCK: 75.
asked the Minister of Labour what is the number of married and single ex-service men, respectively, in Nottingham who are out of employment; and for how many of the single ex-service men will employment be found upon the relief schemes either in operation or contemplated by the City Corporation?

Sir M. BARLOW: At 23rd October there were 3,416 ex-service men at Nottingham registered as unemployed. I am afraid I cannot give separate figures for married and single men, nor can I give the number of single ex-service men now employed, or likely to be employed in the future, on relief works, but some information on this point would, I assume, be in the possession of the local authorities.

EXTENSION OF BOROUGHS.

Mr. TURTON: 39.
asked the Minister of Labour, as representing the Ministry of Health, whether he is aware of the decision of his predecessor in office to appoint, after the conclusion of the proceedings of the Royal Commission on London Government, a Royal Commission to consider the questions of the extension of boroughs and the creation of new county boroughs; whether the pledge given by his predecessor to the effect that, pending the issue of the Report of the last-mentioned Royal Commission and consideration of its recommendations by Parliament, no proposals for the extension of boroughs and the creation of new county boroughs would be entertained by the Ministry; and what steps, if any, he proposes to take to give effect to that decision and to ensure the efficacy of that pledge?

Major BOYD-CARPENTER: My right hon. Friend proposes to give effect to the decision announced by his predecessor in regard to this matter, and he hopes that the proposed Royal Commission will shortly be appointed.

Mr. TURTON: Have any steps been taken with regard to the composition of the Royal Commission?

Major BOYD-CARPENTER: I am afraid that is a question to which I cannot give an adequate reply, but I will ask my right hon. Friend.

Lieut.-Colonel WATTS-MORGAN: It will not be composed entirely of experts, I suppose?

Major BOYD-CARPENTER: I do not know quite what my hon. and gallant Friend means by "experts." My righs hon. Friend is considering the composition of the Commission.

CENSUS FIGURES.

Mr. T. WILLIAMS: 42.
asked the Minister of Labour, as representing the Ministry of Health, whether he is aware that, although the figures for last year's Census are in the hands of the local registrars, the Registrar-General has refused to allow them to be divulged; and whether, in view of the lapse of time since the Census was taken and of the fact that statistics become useless when out of date, he will give instructions for the removal of the restriction prohibiting local registrars from divulging to local authorities the required local Census information?

Major BOYD-CARPENTER: The hon. Member is under a misapprehension. No Census figures remain in the hands of local registrars with the exception of any notes or copies, which they may have privately retained, of certain brief abstracts compiled by them for the use of the Registrar-General; and the whole of the statistics, which could safely be based upon those abstracts, were published in August, 1921, in the Preliminary Census Report. With regard to the latter part of the question, all local authorities are aware, I believe, that they can usually obtain from the- Registrar-General any unpublished Census figures which are already available on payment of a small charge.

Mr. T. WILLIAMS: Can the hon. and gallant Gentleman give us the approximate date when the figures can be secured on the payment of the ten shillings fee suggested?

Major BOYD-CARPENTER: I rather suppose by return of post—as soon as the official finds them and returns them by post.

ABSENT VOTERS.

Viscountess ASTOR: 43.
asked the Minister of Labour, as representing the Ministry of Health, what is the total number of absent voters on the existing register; and what was the number of absent voters who recorded their vote at the recent Election?

The SECRETARY of STATE for the HOME DEPARTMENT (Mr. Bridgeman): I have been asked to reply to this question. The total number of absent voters on the lists which came into force on the 15th October last was, for England and Wales, 162,927, or taking the constituencies which were contested. 154,446. The figure for Scotland is not available. The figures of those who recorded their votes are not yet available, but I expect to be in a position to give them in the course of a few weeks.

Viscountess ASTOR: Can the right hon. Gentleman state how many Navy men missed voting entirely?

Mr. BRIDGEMAN: No, Sir. I am afraid I cannot.

Sir C. KINLOCH-COOKE: Will the right hon. Gentleman consider the advisability of altering the system of the voting of absent voters, in view of the difficulties experienced and the fact that, on this occasion, so many of them were unable to vote?

Lieut.-Commander KENWORTHY: That is why you are here.

Mr. BRIDGEMAN: If my hon. Friend will give me any substantial reason for making any alteration, I shall be very glad to consider doing so.

ESTIMATES COMMITTEE.

Mr. A. M. SAMUEL: 46.
asked the Prime Minister whether it is the intention of the Government to reappoint the Committee on Estimates?

Mr. BALDWIN: I would refer my hon. Friend to the reply which I gave yesterday to my hon. Friend the Member for Spelthorne.

Captain WEDGWOOD BENN: Will an announcement be made before the
House rises; and is it proposed to set up a Committee with really effective powers?

Mr. BALDWIN: I will consider that.

BRITISH DEBT (UNITED STATES).

Mr. PRINGLE: 48.
asked the Prime Minister whether the Government has framed any instructions for the Chancellor of the Exchequer in connection with his forthcoming mission to the United States of America; and whether these; instructions will be laid upon the Table when they are framed and an opportunity be given to the House to discuss them before the Prorogation?

The PRIME MINISTER: I think that it would be inadvisable in negotiations of this kind that the hands of the responsible Minister should be tied by written instructions.

INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE (BRUSSELS).

Captain BENN: 50.
asked the Prime Minister whether it is intended to hold an International Conference at Brussels?

The PRIME MINISTER: No definite arrangement has yet been made.

NEAR EAST.

Captain BENN: 61.
asked the Prime Minister when an opportunity will occur for a discussion of the situation in the Near East?

The PRIME MINISTER: I do not think that a discussion would be desirable while the negotiations at Lausanne are still going on.

INDIAN STATES (PROTECTION AGAINST DISAFFECTION) ACT.

Colonel WEDGWOOD: 52.
asked the Prime Minister whether he will allow an opportunity to discuss the Indian States (Protection against Disaffection) Act which was passed over the heads of the Indian Assembly, and is now accordingly lying upon the Table of the House?

The PRIME MINISTER: I fear that owing to the pressure of other business and the shortness of the present Session it would not be possible to find time during it to discuss this Act. Although, in view of the urgent necessity in India for implementing the Act, it will be regrettable if action on it has to be postponed, I am nevertheless prepared, if hon. Members wish to press for a discussion, to give an undertaking that my Noble Friend the Secretary of State will not submit the Act for His Majesty's approval until the House has had an opportunity of considering it during the next Session.

Mr. SAKLATVALA: Will there be any technical bar against taking up this Act a little later on? In view of the fact that I have received a telegram from Bombay, stating that the people of India are presenting a petition to this Parliament, and have already posted it, would the Prime Minister be good enough to say if, early in the next Session, it will be possible to discuss this matter?

The PRIME MINISTER: The hon. Member evidently did not hear my answer. I promised that, if it is desired—as I presume it will be—that there should be a discussion, the Act will not be implemented until that discussion has taken place.

SMALL-POX.

Mr. GILBERT: 62.
asked the Minister of Labour, as representing the Ministry of Health, whether he can make any statement as to the present epidemic of small-pox; whether it has been confined to London; how many cases have been discovered; how many deaths have occurred; how many of the cases have been vaccinated or not; and can he state what special action his Department has taken in the matter?

Major BOYD-CARPENTER: The present outbreak of small-pox is not confined to London. Cases of this disease have occurred during the present year in 56 districts outside London and in seven Metropolitan boroughs. 893 cases have been discovered, and 26 deaths have occurred. 278 of the cases had been vaccinated. 608 were either unvaccinated or showed no evidence of vaccination, and in seven cases there is no information as
to vaccination. Special instructions have recently been issued to all sanitary authorities and boards of guardians as to the steps to be taken on the occurrence of small-pox, and medical officers of the Ministry have visited the districts in which cases have occurred in order to advise and assist the medical officers of health.

Mr. BUCHANAN: Is it not the case that where outbreaks of small-pox do occur, the cases are usually in congested areas or badly-housed areas?

Mr. SPEAKER: That does not arise out of the question on the Paper.

JUTE TRADE BOARD.

Mr. MOREL: 59.
asked the Minister of Labour whether he is aware that there has been a vacancy on the side of the workers' representatives of the Jute Trade Board (Great Britain) since April, 1922; if so, what steps, if any, have been taken to fill the vacancy; and what are his intentions regarding the filling of the vacancy?

Sir M. BARLOW: I am aware of the existence of the vacancy to which the hon. Member refers. The whole Board, however, comes up for reconstitution at the end of this year, and the filling of this vacancy along with all the others will then be considered.

ROAD CONSTRUCTION.

Mr. LANSBURY: 67.
asked the Minister of Labour what is the total amount of money out of national funds he estimates will be spent on the construction of new roads and widening and improving existing roads during the year ending 31st March, 1923; and how much of this sum will be expended on purchase of land, compensation to persons disturbed in their businesses, legal expenses, materials, and wages, the total number of men expected to be employed, the average weekly wage they will be paid, and the number of hours worked per week?

Mr. PATRICK COLLINS: 119.
asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer the amount at present in the Road Fund
available for the making of new roads and the improvement of existing roads; how much is at present being spent monthly and how many men are employed; what plans have been made for further expenditure; and how many men will be thereby employed?

The PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY to the MINISTRY of TRANSPORT (Lieut.-Colonel W. Ashley): It is estimated that about £15,600,000 will be paid out of the Road Fund, during the current financial year, towards the cost of road works of various kinds, including the cost of ordinary maintenance works. The bulk of this money is paid to local authorities, who are responsible as highway authorities for the execution of the work. For this reason I regret that it is quite impossible for me to furnish the detailed information asked for in the latter part of the hon. Member's question. I would also refer him to my written reply of today to a question from the hon. Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme (Colonel Wedgwood) which deals with the road programme.

Colonel WEDGWOOD: Can the hon. and gallant Gentleman say whether any steps are being taken by his Department to secure for the community the increased value of the land at each side of the roads that are laid?

Lieut.-Colonel ASHLEY: Yes, the policy of betterment is in active operation.

Colonel WEDGWOOD: Will the hon. and gallant Gentleman consider the policy which is being adopted by the Liverpool Corporation in this connection, and will he inquire into it?

Lieut.-Colonel ASHLEY: If the hon. and gallant Gentleman will send me particulars, I will certainly do so.

Viscount CURZON: Can the hon. and gallant Gentleman say whether this money is entirely derived from motorists?

HON. MEMBERS: Fines!

Lieut.-Colonel ASHLEY: I believe so.

Mr. SHINWELL: Will the hon. and gallant Gentleman's Department exercise some supervision in the construction of these roads, so as to make them adaptable for the new needs arising from motor traffic?

Lieut.-Colonet ASHELY: All these new arterial roads are under the direct supervision of, and carried through by, the Ministry of Transport.

VACCINATION.

Mr. FREDERICK ROBERTS: 70.
asked the Minister of Labour, as representing the Ministry of Health, whether any instruction or advice has been issued by the Ministry of Health in favour of pressure being brought to bear upon persons to submit to vaccination; and, if so, whether, in view of the law on this question, he will state the authority for this action?

Major BOYD-CARPENTER: The answer to the first part of the question is in the negative, and the second part, therefore, does not arise.

Oral Answers to Questions — GREECE.

EXECUTION OF EX-MINISTEKS.

BRITISH MINISTER WITHDRAWN.

Sir H. BRITTAIN: (by Private Notice) asked the Prime Minister whether he is able to give the House any further information with regard to the recent tragedy in Athens; and what action His Majesty's Government proposes to take in the matter?

The PRIME MINISTER: His Majesty's Government have no further information than that which has appeared in the Press. His Majesty's Minister has been instructed to withdraw from Athens.

Captain BENN: Has the right hon. Gentleman's attention been called to the statement made by the convicted Cabinet Ministers before execution that they received encouragement, sometimes in writing, from the Foreign Secretary and other Ministers in this country, and, in these circumstances, will the Prime Minister lay on the Table of the House all correspondence which is relevant?

The PRIME MINISTER: I have heard of no such information as the hon. and gallant Gentleman gives. If particulars can be given, I will consider the matter.

Colonel WEDGWOOD: Can the right hon. Gentleman say why His Majesty's Minister has been recalled from Athens, seeing that the British Minister was not
recalled from Budapest under the White Terror, when hundreds of thousands of workmen were murdered?

The PRIME MINISTER: I do not think that reference to what was done on a previous occasion has any bearing on what we are doing now, or whether it is right or wrong. I would like to add that it was with a view of preventing this tragedy that we did inform the Greek Government that, if it did take place, we would withdraw our representative.

Lieut.-Commander KENWORTHY: Why do we take this action when men of high standing are executed, and take no notice when massacres take place in other countries?

The PRIME MINISTER: I am sure that is not so.

Captain BENN: Has the Prime Minister not seen the statement in the "Times" this morning that these Ministers on trial alleged that they had encouragement, and in one case a letter, from British Ministers and encouragement from the Foreign Secretary?

Mr. SPEAKER: There is another question on that point.

Mr. NOEL BUXTON: (by Private Notice) asked the Prime Minister whether, in view of the report that M. Gounaris, late Prime Minister of Greece, who has now been executed, proposed at a date subsequent to April, 1921, and before the defeat of the Greek Armies in Asia Minor to withdraw on their advanced position in order to avoid disaster, and that he was dissuaded from doing so by members of His Majesty's Government, he can make a statement which will clear His Majesty's late Government of this grave charge?

The PRIME MINISTER: I have no information as to any such report as is referred to in this question. As regards the statement in the "Times" referred to by the hon. and gallant Member for Leith (Captain Benn), I must say I did not see it, but I presume it did not profess to give accurate particulars.

Captain BENN: Is the Prime Minister aware that it is stated definitely, as a fact, that a document was referred to, and would the right hon. Gentleman publish all relevant documents?

The PRIME MINISTER: I would need to know what the documents are.

Lord ROBERT CECIL: Would the right hon. Gentleman lay on the Table any precedents for the withdrawal of the Minister to Greece, and under such circumstances?

The PRIME MINISTER: There is certainly, I think, such precedent— [An HON. MEMBER: Serbia!"]—and, I think, Serbia was one of them. [HON. MEMBERS: "No."]

Lord R. CECIL: Was not Serbia a case of murder, and not a case of execution after trial?

The PRIME MINISTER: I will consider whether there are precedents, but this was not the work of the Government, but the work, as I understand it, of a revolutionary committee. [HON. MEMBERS: "Oh!"]

Mr. RAMSAY MacDONALD: Would the right hon. Gentleman say precisely why he did withdraw the Minister?

The PRIME MINISTER: I gave the reason I think. [HON. MEMBERS: "No!"] I think so. The first step we took was to inform the Greek Government that if this action, which we feared might be taken, was actually taken, we should withdraw our Minister. We thought it a barbarous act. We took the step we did in order, if possible, to prevent it. Now that it has taken place, I shall be greatly surprised if the great body of public opinion, not only in this country— [Interruption]—but throughout the civilised world does not support us.

Major ATTLEE: In view of the statement of the right hon. Gentleman that a revolutionary committee has executed these Ministers, is not the present Government of Italy on the same footing?

The PRIME MINISTER: There is a difference which does not appear to be noticed. There was a nominal Government in Greece, but it was not, I think, that Government which carried out these executions.

Mr. HARRIS: Would it not be more in accordance with the functions of the League of Nations to refer a matter of this kind to the League rather than to take isolated action?

SIDDICK COLLIERY EXPLOSION.

Mr. CAPE: (by Private Notice) asked the Secretary for Mines whether he can give the House any information as to the cause of the disaster at Siddick Colliery on Monday last?

The PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY to the BOARD of TRADE (Viscount Wolmer): The information at 'present in the possession of the Ministry of Mines of this lamentable accident, by which five men lost their lives, indicates that it was an explosion of gas caused by the firing of a shot.

Mr. HARDIE: What steps does the Minister propose to take to deal with those responsible for the management of the mines where gas is allowed to accumulate, and where men are at work in danger?

Viscount WOLMER: It is clear that the Ministry of Mines cannot make any declaration about this accident before the facts have been elicited, and these are now—

Mr. HARDIE: That is not the point of my question. My question has not been answered. The answer of the Parliamentary Secretary was that there was gas—[HON. MHMHERS: "Order, order!"]

Mr. SPEAKER: We cannot follow up supplementary questions by a discussion. The hon. Member had better put his question down on the Paper.

Mr. CAPE: Does the Noble Lord tell us that the reports of the Whitehaven (Haig Pit) disaster are still held up?

Viscount WOLMER: I must have notice of that.

Mr. SHINWELL: Why, in view of successive disasters of a similar kind that have taken place during the past few years, has the Government not thought to promote legislation to deal with these matters?

Mr. SPEAKER: It is now after a quarter to four, and only questions of special urgency are allowed.

MR. J. JONES, M.P. (APOLOGY).

Mr. J. JONES: During the course of yesterday's proceedings I lost my temper. It is the only thing I have got to lose. During that time I used certain language which, I believe, is considered unparliamentary. It is dockers' language, and as I happen to represent a constituency in the East End of London largely inhabited by casual labourers, I thought I was using the language they would use to express themselves under the circumstances, on the domestic situation then existing. But if I have offended against the rules of the House, I beg leave to withdraw the remarks I made, and to express my regret. Possibly in future- I may have opportunities of using more Parliamentary language in similar circumstances.

Mr. SPEAKER: I am sure that the House will gladly accept the words of the hon. Member for Silvertown. No one would regret it more than I if I were forced to take stronger measures than I had to adopt yesterday.

Mr. N. BUXTON: I desire, Mr. Speaker, to ask leave to move the Adjournment of the House on a definite matter of urgent public importance.

Mr. SPEAKER: We have got past that point.

Orders of the Day — IRISH FREE STATE CONSTITUTION BILL.

Order for Third Reading read.

Motion made, and Question proposed, "That the Bill be now read the Third time."

Mr. MACPHERSON: I hope that I may be allowed to say a word or two on the Third Reading of this historic Bill before it leaves this Chamber. It may not be inappropriate that I should intervene, because it is now nearly three years ago since it was my duty, as Chief Secretary for Ireland, to produce the original Bill. Much has happened during those three years. We see Northern Ireland to-day sturdy, centralised, indubitably loyal, confining herself to the business of Government as her citizens did in the old days, without any assistance from nature, desirous of making Belfast one of the great industrial centres of the Empire. I think I am speaking on behalf of the friends with whom I am now associated when I say that so long as Ulster cares to pursue her destiny in her own way, within the British Empire, she will have undivided support from those of us who work together on this side. We wish the South and West well.
4.0 P.M.
It is a significant fact that the Measure which is now leaving this Chamber for the last time should be passed by a united House of Commons. I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister on going down to history as the final author of one of the greatest Parliamentary achievements of this century. It is also significant that we, as a House of Commons, are passing without any acrimony and without any hostile criticism from any part of the House a Bill drafted by Ireland's own sons to give the South and West of Ireland what they regard as their legitimate rights. I am speaking to-day in the absence of a great many colleagues of mine who, in the last Parliament, bore the heat and burden of the day. I think I may most appropriately refer to my right hon. Friend Mr. Churchill, who, in the judgment of all those who were present in the last
Parliament, carried through this Bill to this stage because of his own great courage, his great Parliamentary skill and his love of Ireland. I can only say this, that we on this side of the House hope that the path of Ireland in the South and West may be the path of peace.

Lieut.-Colonel HOWARD-BURY: As a new Member, I crave the indulgence of the House. I want to speak on a matter which concerns many thousands of my compatriots who are brought under the new Irish Free State Government. I would not have ventured to have taken up the time of the House so early in the Session had it not been for the fact that this is a subject that interests us most vitally. It may also be the last opportunity that we shall have in this House of discussing these matters which are so essential to our future life under the Irish Free State Government. The late Government were responsible for this Treaty. They were anxious to settle the whole Irish question. For the past 50 years and more Ireland has been the shuttlecock of parties. We wish this House to treat its policy with Ireland as a national policy, in the same way as we ought to treat our foreign policy. The changes have brought to this House the loss of its Irish Members. Possibly those from Scotland may take their place in some discussions such as there used to be in olden times. The late Government made this Treaty, and the present Government, I hope, are fully satisfied that the Constitution in every respect comes within the terms of that Treaty. The late Government gave their blessing to it, but what they gave with one hand they took away with the other. Here was a country seething at the time with insurrection, and what was the first action of the late Government? They withdrew the Army and the police, and they left all those who were living there with no protection whatever. I blame the last Government for the withdrawal of those troops. It is an ordinary custom, whether in business or in the Army, that when you have to hand over a post to hand it over in proper fashion to someone who can look after the responsibilities of that post. In this case, they did not hand it over to anyone. The natural result was what anyone who lived there could have foretold. Everyone was armed, and the forces of lawlessness,
disorder, and anarchy at once came to the surface. There were no restraints of law: no punishments were inflicted, and the natural result was the same as would happen in this great city were all the police and soldiers suddenly to be withdrawn.
I am glad to see that the Government realise their moral responsibility for all the damage that has accrued since that date. The damage amounts to between £20,000,000 and £30,000,000. The Irish Free State Government have said—and I believe that they intend to keep their word—that they will pay the amount that is due to those who have been driven out of the country and who have lost everything, but I wish that there was the backing of this country behind those promises. Ireland is a country of surprises, and we do not know how long the Government in Ireland may last and what may happen. Are we, who have been driven out of the country, to suffer from the inability of the Irish Government to pay what they owe? I would like some definite statement from the Government as to what they intend to do in such a case, which we hope may not happen. I am glad to see that the Government have realised their duty to the ex-soldiers in Ireland. I do not think it is realised what a difference there is between the ex-soldiers in Ireland and the ex-soldiers in this country. In this country, their friends and relations urged them to join, and, if they did not join, then after a certain time they were compelled to join. In Ireland, the compulsion was on the other side. They joined up against the wishes of their friends and relations and against the orders of their parents, and when they returned to that country after the War they were not welcomed with open arms as they were in this country. I can tell the House of the very sad case of a young boy who went out to France and who came back gassed and with only a few months to live. His own friends would have nothing whatever to say to him. They turned him away and spurned him, and said, "It is your own fault; you went to fight for the English." That is only one of many such cases. The question of the boundaries of the Northern Government and the Southern Government is bound to crop up as the result
of the Treaty. The late Government were responsible for making promises which were inconsistent one with another. They made a promise to the Northern Government and they made a promise to the Southern Government, and the two did not tally. I believe that the two Irish Governments, if left to themselves, will be able, with goodwill between the two parties, to reach an amicable and friendly settlement. The Treaty, after all, is only a makeshift. It excludes from a State, which surely needs ballast at the present time, and which is fighting for its life, all the stable and settled elements of the North-East, but it has handed over to the Irish people the responsibility for their own actions.
The final end of every Irishman is to have a united Ireland. It cannot come by pressure or by force from outside. It cannot come by force or by compulsion from inside. It will not come immediately. Memories of murders and outrages are still too fresh. It will take many years before the two parties can forget. Time alone can soften. Perhaps it may not even come in our lifetime. But come one day it will. It is bound to come, but it can only come by a policy of good will between the Northern and Southern Governments, and by a full appreciation of the difficulties that each has to undergo. If the North will show good will towards the South, and the South can show that they can govern firmly and justly without partiality, favour, or affection, then, I believe, the time for the unity of Ireland is not so far off. An island divided against itself can never prosper, and Ireland is not such a very big island after all, though its influence extends to nearly every country in the world.
We have now gone so far along the road that we cannot withdraw, and the only thing that this Government can do is to assist the new Free State Government by every method possible and to try and make a firm Government that can rule and that can bring law and order into the country. If one picks up the sheets of any Irish newspaper to-day, the "Irish Independent," "Freeman's Journal," and the "Irish Times," one sees column upon column of outrages—bridges blown up, trains derailed, and every sort of outrage going on. It is a Government faced with
unparalleled difficulties which people in this country can hardly realise. The English Press ignores the difficulties, and by their sins of omission they have brought about a state of feeling in which people do not understand what is happening in Ireland. I wish the right hon. Gentleman the late Member for Dundee, Mr. Churchill, instead of saying that all was quiet in Ireland, had paid a visit to that country and had seen for himself what was going on. Dublin is only nine hours from London, not so far as Dundee, and had he gone and seen things for himself, he would have changed his opinion as expressed in his report of what was occurring in that country. I would ask this Government to do all that it can to ensure that the New Free State Government is set up firmly on its legs and to give it all the sympathy it can in the great difficulties that surround it at the present time. Everyone in Ireland is praying for peace and for law and order. In every church, whether it be Catholic or Protestant, the same prayer goes up every day—
Lord, give us peace in our midst"—
and peace can only come about when a firm Government is established in that country. It is not by criticisms from people in this country when it tries to act firm y in order to put down rebellion that it will come. The only way and the only hope of getting peace is to ensure a firm and a stable Government, and only a firm and stable Government will bring peace and law and order to that unhappy and distracted island.

Sir JOHN BUTCHER: I hope the hon. and gallant Member who has just spoken will allow me to congratulate him on the well-informed and straightforward speech to which we have just listened. The hon. Gentleman is not only a gallant soldier, but the House will be interested to know that he was the leader of the first expedition which endeavoured to climb Mount Everest, and which achieved such a large measure of success. If anyone be entitled to comment upon the present position in Ireland and to offer up a hope and prayer for tie amelioration of conditions in that country, it is an hon. Member who, like himself, knows the country and who has his home there.
I am not on this occasion going to repeat the criticisms which I made on the
Second Reading of this Bill. I do not blame the present Government, but when we find Clauses in the Treaty which inflict intolerable wrong upon British subjects outside Ireland, I think it is a great misfortune. May I remind hon. Members that under this Measure, whenever a British subject domiciled in England, Scotland or other parts of the Empire goes over to Ireland, he is deprived of all civil rights in that country, unless he is prepared to give up his home and take up a new home in Southern Ireland? He pays taxes, it is true, and he may reside in Ireland as long as he likes without becoming domiciled, yet he has no right to vote at any election for Parliament. We used to hear a good deal about the principle that there should be no taxation without representation. That is an admirable principle, and I would suggest to the present Government that they should insist upon a system in Ireland under which they do not tax British subjects without giving them the right to representation, because that is treading along a very dangerous path.
There are three points with reference to the position of civil servants and public servants under Article 10 on which I should like some assurance. I am sorry that the Chancellor of the Exchequer is not here, because I would have liked to have his personal assurance on these points. The first point is that under Article 10 of the Treaty, civil servants and public servants who retire, or are discharged by the Free State Government, are entitled to certain compensation and pensions. When this point was first raised—I think it was in December last, in a question to the then Leader of the House as to who would pay this compensation—I was told definitely and plainly that the Free State Government would be responsible in the first instance for the payment of this compensation, but behind them would be the British Government, and if the Free State Government did not pay then the British Government would pay. If the Attorney-General desires to have the reference he will find it in the OFFICIAL REPORT, Vol. 149, col. 413, on the 19th of December last year. But the matter did not rest there, because many questions were put on this subject during the Session of 1922. This question of the guaranteeing of pensions and allowances to public servants under
Article 10 was repeatedly raised, and Mr. Churchill, the then Colonial Secretary, on at least two occasions, if not more, and in particular on 13th March, 1922, repeated this assurance.
Surely such guarantees ought to be embodied in a Statute. A person ought to be able to assert his rights, not by hunting up the volumes of the OFFICIAL EEPORT and quoting a particular speech of some Secretary of State, but he ought to be able to turn to the Statute and say, "The Government have put these guarantees in the form of a Statute which binds not only this Government but all future Governments." I do appeal to the Attorney-General that the Government should at the earliest possible moment embody that verbal guarantee in an Act of Parliament in the form of a statutory guarantee. I know that I should have raised this matter on the earlier stages of the Bill, but we have had very little time to consider this Measure. I think the Government will realise that when a promise such as that is made they ought to take the earliest possible opportunity of making that guarantee good.

Mr. POTTS: I am a new Member, and I do not quite understand the right method of procedure. But on a point of Order, I wish to ask whether the hon. and learned Baronet is in order in repeating arguments which he has used before. I know, Mr. Speaker, that this is a matter in your discretion, but I think that when an hon. Member gets up to speak a second time, he ought to produce new matter and new arguments, and if he does not do so, I think he is out of order.

Mr. SPEAKER: I think the hon. and learned Baronet is quite within his rights, because his previous speech was made upon a different stage of this Measure. We are now dealing with the Third Reading of this Bill.

Sir J. BUTCHER: My second point is as to how this compensation is to be paid. The question was raised last Session as to whether this money should be paid in British currency or in Irish currency. This is a very important question, because it is quite possible to conceive that the Irish Government might establish a currency of their own which might be
depreciated, and it would be a very serious matter for persons entitled to this compensation, if it were paid in a depreciated currency. As a matter of right, I think there can be no doubt on this point, because the Treaty says that these civil servants will get compensation under no less favourable terms than they would have got under the Government of Ireland Act, 1920. In that Act they would have got their compensation in British currency, because there was no idea then of setting up a Government in Ireland which might issue a new currency. I believe that a promise was given last Session by Members of the Government that these public servants would be paid in British currency, but whether that promise was given or not, I ask that it should be given now and that these men should not be placed in a worse position than they would have been under the Act of 1920.
Then there is the question of the commutation of these pensions. Civil servants in England have, under Acts ranging from 1871 to 1882, certain rights and privileges in regard to getting their pensions commuted. I think the matter is left to the discretion of the Treasury and they can commute the whole or part of their pensions and receive a lump sum down. If any men are entitled to get pensions commuted, I think it is that class whose careers have been cut short in Ireland, who have either retired or have been discharged by the new Irish Government, and have had to embark upon a new career. In many cases they may have to establish themselves in a new business in another country and endeavour to cut out a new career for themselves. Therefore I think it is exceedingly important that they should have some right of commutation as that which is accorded to British civil servants.
I want to know if the civil servants who get compensation under Article 10 will be entitled to go to the British Treasury to have their pensions commuted? The answer will probably be that their pensions will be dealt with by the Irish Government, and that being so it is difficult to provide that they should have power to go to the British Treasury. If that is so, then the only Government who could make provision for the commutation of pensions would be the new Irish
Free State Government. It may be quite true that we cannot make provision for that commutation, but I think the Government could make representations to the Free State Government pointing out that it is most desirable that they should pass legislation dealing with this point, because if legislation for that purpose is not passed these eivil servants will not be placed in as good position as if they had received compensation under the Act of 1920. If they had received compensation under that Act they would have been entitled to go to the British Government and ask for a commutation of the whole or part of their pension. Unless some provision is made by which they can go to the English Government and get their pensions or part of them commuted, then they are in a worse position than they would have been under the Act of 1920. Those are the points to which I wish to draw attention, and I should like to have some assurance that what, I have asked for will be done.

Mr. CLYNES: The Debates in this House on these two Bills and on other stages of this question which have received the attention of this House have been very different from the Irish Debates to which we were accustomed some years ago. I rose to say only a few words in order to associate hon. Gentlemen who sit on these benches with the last stage of these two Bills. There have been, in the course of these discussions, references to the part which parties have played in this country upon this question during the past 40 years. I am not going to attempt to apportion either blame or praise, for indeed we are faced now with a problem which compels us to approach it more or less in a chastened mood.
We have undergone a succession of costly and bitter experiences, and viewing the results as they are, we are bound to look at them from a very different angle. I will only say for the Labour party, in the country and in the House of Commons, that it has no regret whatever in regard to its attitude on the question of Irish self-government since first its Members come to this House, or since first it was created as a party in the country. I listened yesterday with feelings of regret to some speeches made by hon. Gentlemen who apparently feel that there is in the Irish character some inherent defect, tending to illegalities and
breaches of the law as part of the Irish nature. I not only do not share that view, but I repudiate any such conclusion. We must take into account what has been the method of Irish government for generations. Admittedly it has been a method resting upon force, and operating through instruments forged against the will of the people and in defiance of their persistent demand for no more than we have claimed a right to enjoy ourselves—the right of the people to govern their own country. Instead of proceeding now, as some hon. Members have done, to indulge in further censure of the Irish people, we ought to make the most complete atonement to the people of Ireland which we can, and which this Measure offers us some opportunity of doing. Force always begets force, and parties who would not listen lo demands pressed peacefully and constitutionally year by year, have been compelled to listen by a measure of force which they themselves have evoked.
There is left in this House of Commons but one representative of a party which at one time was powerful—a party which in constitutional form made constitutional demands and pressed them year by year, a party which had behind its back an enormous majority of the Irish people. I do not know whether the hon. Member for the Scotland Division of Liverpool (Mr. T. P. O'Connor) intends to speak in the course of this Debate, but I do not think this question can be properly closed without some words from him as to the efforts made by that party in this House for so many years. Irishmen in other lands than Ireland, in Scotland, in our Colonics and in America, have shown themselves as law-abiding as any other sections of the community in any one of those countries, and they have been able to take part in making the laws which govern them. I only want to add that, in my view, to give this Treaty full force unity is required in Ireland. When the Governments of the North and South have completely repressed disorder and have established themselves on a footing comparable with the peaceful conditions obtaining in other lands, they will thereby have accomplished a very difficult task. But there will still be need to try and unite Ireland as well as to give it self-government, and that cannot be assured until we have Irish unity.
Irishmen must seek the economic, social and agricultural prosperity of their country by acting as one unit and not as two conflicting elements and forces. I would therefore suggest, so far as my words may reach the Irish leaders of every class or section, North or South, that they can help that unity by themselves appealing to the masses of the Irish people to bury these worn-out causes of conflict and to beat the drum less loudly than is done on certain so-called days of celebration. The leaders know better, and I wish they would more frankly and more honestly tell their followers the truth about these matters. It is up to them to lead the masses of the people in the right direction. When this Act is finally consummated, and when we have established a condition of affairs under which law-abiding and peaceably disposed people can live, there will still remain that task on the part of the Irish leaders, of trying to unite the two sections of the Irish people and to make them into one coherent nation, animated by the high purpose of seeking the prosperity of their native country.

Major MOLLOY: I want to say a word or two on behalf of the Loyalist minority in the South and West of Ireland. In the first place, I should like, as regards the Treaty, and in order to put myself right with some of my own friends, to say at once I acknowledge that that Treaty must be accepted in its entirety, and that it is the duty of every loyal subject of His Majesty neither by word nor deed to prevent it being brought to fruition. In speaking of the Loyalist minority in Ireland, I would like to ask who are these people, what have they done, and what has been their reward? It is very necessary, I think, to tell some people who these Loyalist minority are, because it seems to me there is a great deal of ignorance on the subject. The Loyalist minority in the South and West of Ireland consist in the first place of descendants of Irish people who, in the 12fch century, came over to this country and asked the then King of England to go to Ireland and establish some sort of Government there under which people could live in prosperity, comfort and safety. A further section of this Loyalist minority are descended from soldiers, judicial functionaries, administrators and mer-
chants, who have, during seven and a half centuries, left England to come over to Ireland and settle there, and have upheld the Government of the Kings of England all that time. Coming up to more recent dates, a great many members of this minority are civil servants who have gone over from this country to take up positions in Ireland. What have these people done? They have upheld the Government of the Kings of England in Ireland for 750 years through good report and through evil report.
What has been their reward? Their reward has been that by the Treaty which has been agreed to, and to which this Act of Parliament gives fruition, they have been deprived of the protection of the nation whose rights in Ireland they have upheld, and they have been left at the mercy of a Government established by His Majesty's Government which it is acknowledged is incapable of protecting them when the Treaty comes into force. We all know that it has been incapable of protecting them, and that as a result those who have been compelled to remain in Ireland are living in terror, while many have been forced to fly to this country as refugees. I say that the meting out of such treatment to people who have done such noble service to the British nation is a very poor reward. I am now making an appeal to His Majesty's Government to do everything in their power to ensure the security, peace and comfort of these people in the future. A great many of these unfortunate individuals have been deprived of everything they possess. I hope the Government will take the necessary steps to see that they get just reparation for all that they have lost, and that when the Free State Government comes over to England later on, as it undoubtedly will, in order to obtain monetary assistance for carrying on its Government, such monetary assistance shall only be given on the condition that the claims of the Loyalist minority in the South and West of Ireland shall be a first charge upon the grant in order that they may be recouped the losses they have sustained.
Another class I would like to refer to for a moment consists of Englishmen who have within the last 10 or 15 years gone over to Ireland as civil servants. The position of these men at the present moment is absolutely impossible. They are not wealthy men, and for some years
to come there is not the least chance of there being reciprocity of feeling between Irishmen and Englishmen in Ireland. I say that with regret because I have been living in England for 31 years and have received nothing but the greatest consideration, generosity, and hospitality from Englishmen. I am ashamed to think that for some considerable time to come Englishmen in Ireland are not likely to receive the treatment which I have enjoyed over here. My attention has been called to the position of those Englishmen who have received Civil Service appointments in Ireland by a man who served in my regiment during the War. He tells me that they are more or less on the horns of a dilemma. They have either to remain in the Irish Civil Service and to be ostracised, or they have to go on an utterly inadequate pension. I hope the Government can see its way to look into this matter and ensure that these men are recompensed in a proper manner. If they have to leave Ireland, they ought to be provided for by the Government here.

Mr. SULLIVAN: We all wish for the time to come when the South and North of Ireland will come together, and when all Irishmen will work for the common good of the Motherland. I am inclined to think that once Ireland is removed from party politics in this country, Irishmen will come together much quicker than was possible under old methods. I am very sorry to say I believe that Ireland has been made the sport of both political parties in this country. The one party used the one portion when it suited them, and the other party used the other portion. I think that once that influence is removed the probability is that the Irish will be able to make up what is really not a fault at all, and work for the good of the country. The point that I want to place before the House is this: We do not think that any man or woman should be driven out of Ireland because of their race or any other disability, and, if that has taken place, either in the North or in the South, we regret it very much. I want, however, to remind hon. Members here that that has happened right through the history of Ireland. The world is covered with men and women of Irish blood who have had to leave the country because of the malpractices in the British government of that country. It is not, therefore, any new thing that Irishmen
have been driven forth from their own country. You have them in Scotland, in England, in America, a standing protest against the misgovernment that has taken place in their country.
We hope that the passing of this Measure may be the beginning of a new era, not only in Ireland, but in the relations of Ireland with this country. I have been reading in to-day's paper a speech made by the Marquess of Graham at some function in Scotland, in which the Noble Marquess advocated that, now that this Measure is passed, Irishmen in this country should lose the right to vote. I would like hon. Members to pay attention to that, because the hon. and learned Member for York (Sir J. Butcher) seemed to make that a grievance so far as this country is concerned. The Marquess of Graham, however, is advocating that Irishmen and Irishwomen in Scotland and England should have no right of citizenship and no right to vote. We deprecate anything of that kind. If a man goes to Ireland and wants to take up a new citizenship, he should be at liberty to do so. On the other hand, if he wants to keep his British citizenship, he should be at liberty to do so. But that must apply to both sides of the Channel, and not only to one side. I would only add that I sincerely hope that the quarrel that has taken place in Ireland will come to an end. It is in the interest of that country that it should come to an end. I have met the men from the North and the men from the South. There is no great difference between those men. They are both good in their own way, and I am quite certain that, when they can agree so well in the industrial field, they will be able to agree in other fields. We wish that that time may come speedily, in the interest, not only of Ireland, but of this country.

Colonel GRETTON: There is one thing in which all Irishmen who know Ireland and love that country will agree, and all Englishmen who are interested in Ireland will agree with them. That is that it is most desirable that Ireland should be one united country, and that no permanency, either economic, financial or social, can be brought about on a firm and lasting basis until Ireland agrees to be one people and one country. The hon. Member who has just sat down informed the House I that the world is full of Irishmen who
have been driven out of Ireland by the malpractices of previous British Governments. I understand that in America alone there are some 20,000,000 men and women of Irish extraction, and there are large numbers, amounting to millions, in other parts of the world. Are we to assume that it is the hon. Member's view that, now that the malpractices of the British Government of Ireland have ceased, vast numbers of those people will return to the land from which they have been driven by previous British Governments? Of course, an argument of that kind will not bear the slightest examination. Like other countries, Ireland can only maintain a certain number of people, and, owing to the character of the Irish race, there has been a constant stream of emigration to other countries. That is the reason why so large a number of Irishmen and Irishwomen are no longer domiciled in Ireland, but in other parts of the world.
The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Platting (Mr. Clynes) deprecated the use of force, and devoted some strong sentences in his speech to a condemnation of the use of force, for which he blamed the British Government in Ireland. He appears, however, to forget that the Provisional Government's only hope of being able to exist is that it will be able so to use the force at its command that it may suppress disorder and rebellion, and reestablish peace in the unhappy State of Southern Ireland. As in every other country where disorder arises, even this new Provisional Government has to use force, and its only hope of existence is in that. Arguments of that kind are really of no account and of no use. The act has been taken and the deed is done, so far as this House and this country are concerned. It has been decided that a Free State shall be set up in Southern Ireland, and that there shall be a Northern Parliament and a Northern State still attached to the United Kingdom. We have to face that position, and, great as our misgivings may be, it is now our duty to do what we can to make this decision workable, and to give it every opportunity for success. I regret nothing that I have done, but the established fact is there. I do know that many prayers are made for peace in Southern Ireland. Those
prayers, however, are not made with the faith which moves mountains, but in fear and trembling as to the result.
I desire to associate myself with the appeal which has been made by two hon. Members who have addressed the House for the first time this afternoon on behalf of the unhappy loyalist population, a large number of whom are still left in Southern Ireland. Their position is deplorable. There appears to be—I am not saying by whom — an organised attempt to raid the farms, the businesses and dwellings, and particularly to destroy the dwellings, of all those residents in those parts of Southern Ireland who have the misfortune to be of English extraction. There is a particular attempt made to destroy public and business buildings which have been erected by Englishmen in Ireland. It might almost appear that a deliberate attempt is being made to wipe out and obliterate all traces of the English occupation of Ireland during 700 years. Meanwhile the unfortunate loyalist population are left in a most deplorable condition. They are more subject—this is very easy to prove, and what I say can be challenged if desired—to the outrages which have been described in this House more than once, than any other portion of the population. If they choose to remain British subjects they are, under this Constitution, left without the particular rights conferred upon Irish citizens under the new Constitution. They will be in the position of outlanders, with boycott pressure and prejudice, against them; and their only crime is that they believed in the Ministers of the British Crown, and endeavoured loyally to uphold the British authority in Ireland when it was still there. Are we not bound in honour to do all that we can to take every measure possible for the protection and comfort of these people, to take care that monetary compensation shall be given as some solatium to them for the wrongs and losses which they have suffered, that that compensation shall be paid promptly without any undue delay, and that, in any case, the British Government shall give some guarantee which shall be something more than mere words. I would press this point upon the attention of His Majesty's Ministers, and urge them to take active and immediate steps to come to the support and solace of the
loyal population, mainly from Southern Ireland, who have been driven out, ruined, to this side of the Irish Channel.
I support also the appeal made by the hon. and learned Member for York (Sir J. Butcher) on behalf of those who are to receive compensation for pensions when they are discharged from the service of the State in Ireland. The position of these people is extremely unsatisfactory and uncertain, and they are in great doubt as to what the outcome will be. Without repeating anything that my hon. and learned Friend has said, I would point out that quite a large number of civil servants have been driven out of Ireland owing to recent events, and they are not able to go over to Dublin to make claims for compensation, because, if they did, under present conditions, their lives would be in the most serious danger, and no protection would be afforded them. I turn, finally, and this is the only large point remaining to be raised, to the question of the interpretation of the Constitution. We have raised points of doubt and difficulty under a number of Articles of the Constitution, and the Attorney-General has given answers; but those answers, at the best, have only been partial, and constantly he has had to rely upon the second Section of the Constituent Act, stated in the Schedule to this Bill, which is to the effect that the Constitution must be read with reference to the Articles of Agreement for a Treaty with Great Britain, and that anything repugnant to any of the provisions of the Treaty shall be absolutely void and inoperative to the extent of its repugnancy. I have not used all the words, but that is the effect. It will be admitted on all sides that the Treaty is a very much wider instrument than was generally known or understood at the time when it passed this House. We have; been constantly referring to the four corners of the Treaty, but those four corners are very far apart indeed. In fact, they almost seem to be torn away from the Treaty altogether, so wide and so loose is it in some of its provisions. We have to consider what is to be done when any question arises as to whether the Constitution, or the acts arising under the powers of the Constitution, are within the terms of the Treaty.
5.0 P.M.
Who is to set in motion this second Clause? I imagine there will be various
matters which might arise, including the case of the interpretation of Article 49 of the Treaty, which sets out what is the duty of the Free State Government and what are the rights and privileges of the British Government in the case of strained relations or actual war. I imagine that a case of that kind would be one for negotiation and adjustment between the two Governments, and if those two Governments disagreed there would be the usual resort which might be taken by any two Governments, either economic pressure or the application of force of arms. It is not a very satisfactory position. There will probably be in addition a very large number of cases where British subjects or groups of British subjects, or it may be citizens of the Irish Free State, have doubt and feel it incumbent to raise questions as to the interpretation of the Constitution within the four corners of the Treaty. How are they to proceed? In the case of British subjects without the rights of Irish citizenship, how are they to proceed?
I think the Attorney-General will agree that the Constitution lays down that questions of the interpretation of the Constitution can only be raised in the Irish High Court. They may go to the Irish Supreme Court and then, according to the Constitution, the Crown may exercise its prerogative and give a right of appeal. But how can all those matters be set in motion? I think this is a matter which is of the most urgent importance having regard to what we have found out as to the meaning of the new Constitution in the course of these Debates. There are matters undoubtedly of great doubt which will require interpretation. Can the British subject resident in Ireland, though not domiciled, or a citizen of the Irish Free State set these processes in motion and claim the protection of the Privy Council if he is aggrieved or represents a large class of persons who are aggrieved by any Acts which may be within or outside the Constitution? Friends of mine in Southern Ireland are-greatly exercised over these matters, and I urge the Government seriously to address itself to these very urgent questions. Are they satisfied that the right of appeal to aggrieved British subjects or citizens of the Irish Free State to the-Privy Council of this country to interpret points arising out of the Constitution and
the Treaty is absolutely indisputable and established? If they are, by what means may that right be set in motion and exercised? This Act gives me and many of my friends the gravest misgiving, but we are in a minority. The British people, rightly or wrongly, perhaps ignorant of the facts of the case, have by a majority decided that this experiment is to be made. We do not desire or intend to do anything, either as Members of the House or privately, to impede the successful establishment of a peaceable and orderly Government. We desire to see it established.

Mr. PATRICK COLLINS: As an Irish man, this is the happiest day of my life. The House has given us what we have been looking for for 700 years. Five generations of our family have fought for this freedom and, thank God, I have seen the day on which it has come. The hon. Member opposite is very doleful about the Irish question. He may rest assured that Irishmen will do the very best for the country. It is a great act of justice done to them and they will never forget it. You have given them this freedom and you can rest assured that when they take the Oath of Allegiance they will hold to it and will never go back. Irishmen have never had a chance. Now we will give them a chance, and you will never regret it. The Government in Ireland has not had an opportunity. Really the Irish people are moral and peaceable when they get a chance to do what is right. This is the greatest thing that has ever happened to us and there is not an Irishman in England who does not glorify what is done for her. As an Irishman speaking for my people in England, we are thankful for what is done for us, and I am sure you will never regret what you have done.

Colonel Sir C. YATE: The question of Irish citizenship has been raised, and I should like to ask the Attorney-General to make the position of Englishmen in Ireland in future a little clearer than it has been made yet. Speaking yesterday he said the qualifications for citizenship are set out in Article 3, and in Article 3 it is laid down that there must be a residence in Ireland of seven years, and an Englishman in Ireland can either accept Irish citizenship or not, as he pleases. Will an Englishman now in Ireland, or
going over there subsequently after the full period, if he accepts Irish citizenship, lose English citizenship? The principal questions are the franchise and the right to sit in the Irish Parliament. If an Englishman goes over to Ireland hereafter, I understand the precise period he will have to qualify by residence is not yet finally laid down, but whatever the period is, will that be considered reciprocally in this country? Whatever rules are laid down as regards qualification for the franchise and the right to sit in the Irish Parliament for an Englishman in Ireland, will the same rules be applied to an Irishman in England? An hon. Member opposite said these rules should apply equally to both, and I quite agree. Whatever rule is laid down in Ireland, I think the same rule should be applied to Irishmen in England. I do not know whether the hon. Member (Mr. Collins) has seven years' residence or not, but he is evidently entitled without any such qualification.

Mr. McENTEE: I should like to have an opportunity of speaking as an Irishman who has more then seven years' residence in this country but at the same time more than seven years' residence in Ireland in the past. I should like to make my appeal to-day especially to those who represent constituencies in the North of Ireland. All my people, my parents, myself in my younger days—that is the only excuse I can offer for it now, that I was young—held and voiced the views that I have heard stated by some hon. Members coming from constituencies in the North of Ireland. With some of them I am in entire agreement to-day, particularly those who are now pleading—and I hope their plea will be answered—for unity in the very near future amongst the different sections in Ireland. I have been one of those who would be considered if I were in Ireland to-day to be a Southern Irish Loyalist—I mean my time in Ireland was spent amongst these people. I know a good few of them personally and I am in touch with them to some extent to-day. When I was younger I had an opportunity of listening to many of the speeches that used to be made by the late Colonel King-Harman and I was influenced by them, and because of the views that he and others held in common with myself, I put forward some of the opinions I have heard voiced in this House, which frankly I regret much to hear voiced in this
House to-day. There are still undoubtedly a number of Members here representing those views who, although they appear to give lip service to unity in Ireland, do not order their actions and their speeches in a way which would give any real hope to those of us who really believe in Irish unity for the future. I speak as one who used to be one of them and who has left them, who used to hold their views, and has given up those views because I reasoned and, reasoning, saw the effects not only in the South but in the North of Ireland of the expression of the views that are still, unfortunately, being expressed. I had an opportunity in my younger days of working on a farm. Later, I worked in a shipyard in the Belfast area, and I had an opportunity of witnessing some things that compelled me to reconsider the views which I held in regard to the position of the Nationalists. I have seen many things, and other hon. Members must have seen even more things, that made mc ashamed of being associated with people who could be responsible for some of the actions that I saw. I have seen men throw heavy-iron rivets at little school children merely because they were Catholics. [HON. MEMBERS: "No!"] Yes, I have seen it in the shipyards in Belfast, and when I protested I was brutally beaten. I am speaking now of many years ago, and if I could believe that that condition of things did not prevail in the North of Ireland to-day I should be exceedingly glad, but on reading the English papers, and living in England, one cannot fail to notice that during the last 12 months men have been treated in a similar way, simply and solely because they were Catholics, in the City of Belfast.
I have had an opportunity of interviewing some of my fellow workers who were driven out of Belfast, not because of any political views they held, because some of them were what would be called Loyalists in Belfast, but because of circumstances over which they had no control, simply because they happened to be born Catholics in Catholic families. These things are still going on, unfortunately, and any man, whatever his political views, would be ashamed to stand up here and defend that kind of action. I am told, and I believe it is true, certainly I have no reason to doubt it, that in the South of Ireland cases of a similar character
are taking place in regard to men who would be described as Loyalists. I am exceedingly sorry to hear it, and I do not think that anybody on these benches would give any support to that kind of action. We are face to face with the fact that both in the North of Ireland and in the South of Ireland these things which we all regret are taking place at the present time, and we should all be best engaged, especially those of us who are Irishmen, in trying to do away with the feeling that leads to actions which we also seriously deprecate.
I should like to make a suggestion to my friends from the North of Ireland, and I make it as one who has been amongst them but who has left them because I was convinced they were wrong. No doubt they are quite as convinced that they are right. I am not, and never have been, a Sinn Feiner. I am not, and never have been, a Nationalist. I am simply one of those who knows that whether in the North or in the South there is a special class in the community, the working class, who have had very little consideration either from Nationalists or from Loyalists when they were in power and had the opportunity of determining their lives. I have not much information that the conditions are much altered to-day. I believe that the working classes in the North and in the South of Ireland are in exactly the same condition to-day as they were years ago. They are suffering from the same unemployment and from the same lack of housing accommodation. I have seen children in the North and in the South—and if I went over to-day I am certain that T could see them now— suffering from lack of food, and having no decent boots or clothes to wear. These are things that the North and the South will have to attend to immediately if there is going to be any unity or any real peace in Ireland in the future.
May I make a special appeal to my hon. Friends opposite? The speeches of leaders in Ireland, whether in the North or in the South, have a tremendous influence upon Irishmen living in that country. I do not think that there is any other country in the world where the ordinary rank and file pay so much attention and give such loyalty to their leaders as they do in Ireland. I have seen huge crowds of men and women influenced by the words of a speaker, and I have seen actions that were almost
certain to be taken stopped by the advice of a speaker, a leader. May I appeal to my hon. Friends opposite who come from the North of Ireland, that they will not continue to do that which they have done in the past? I should make the same appeal if I were addressing men holding Sinn Fein or Southern Irish views. I ask my hon. Friends not to deliberately stir up the people to the strife that has been going on in the past, that they shall not use their influence with one section of working people against another section of working people in any part of Ireland, that they shall not do as they have done in the past in that direction, but that they shall do the very opposite.
I ask them to go back to their people and to say to them; "We are sincerely desirous that the people of Ireland, Protestant and Catholic, and those who hold neither view, shall live together in peace and settle down to the determination to make Ireland prosperous, as Ireland could be prosperous, given the opportunity." If hon. Members will do that, and if their views, speaking as representatives of the North of Ireland, are broadcasted, they will find amongst the Southern Irishmen a keen desire to hold out the hand of fellowship to aid them in bringing real peace and prosperity to the country. I have travelled as a Protestant over the whole of Southern Ireland, and I have been in places where I was probably the only Protestant within a radius of five or six miles. I have lived among Southern Irish Catholics, and I want to say, to their eternal credit, that never on one occasion in the years that I lived there was I in any way interfered with because of my religious views. That could not have happened had I been a Roman Catholic living in Belfast. I might have lived there for 11 months and three weeks as a Southern Irish Catholic, if I happened to have been one, and I might have lived there in close friendship and good fellowship with all my fellow workers, but immediately we approached the 12th July—[HON. MEMBERS: "Rubbish!"]—It is not rubbish. I am speaking of what I experienced. The history of the riots of the 12th July prove it. I have heard some people talk about the treatment meted out to the Loyalists in the South of Ireland, and I deprecate that treatment as much as anybody, but let us not forget the treatment meted out to
Catholics in the North of Ireland. I have seen it myself, and I know it. I was foolish enough to take part in it—[HON. MEMBERS: "Oh!"]—when I was a young man, and influenced by the kind of opinion which I deprecate so much to-day.
If hon. Members opposite really believe in peace, and if they are prepared to give more than lip service to peace, I ask them to go back to Ireland and say to their people, as some of them have said in the House of Commons: "We believe in making Ireland prosperous. We want to stop the bitterness of the past, and to forget it. The past is dead. Do no trouble to bury it. Let it lie there, dead." There is work to do, and no man will ever do better work than using his time to bring about a rapprochement between the North and South of Ireland, and to give an opportunity to the people of Ireland to make at least a decent and prosperous future for that country. I appeal to my hon. Friends from the North of Ireland to do that, and I know from years of association with the men in the South, I know as a Protestant who has lived amongst Catholics in the South, and who is even now in close association with them, although living in this country, that they will respond. I ask hon. Members to use their influence, even if they are the first to do it, and even if they think that the other side are not prepared to do it. Let them offer the hand of good fellowship, and I am certain that the other side will accept it. I am more certain that if they accept it, Ireland will be all the better in the future because they have had the manhood and the courage to do it.

Colonel NEWMAN: This Debate has revealed the fact that there are now in this House a number of Members who are Irishmen. I wish that they had been in the last Parliament. The hon. Member who has just spoken displays a real knowledge of the South of Ireland. He said he had lived in the South of Ireland, as a Protestant, for a great number of years amongst the Catholics of the South, and that no harm had ever been done to him. That is perfectly true. Every word he said on that point is true, but, during the last few unhappy years, how is it that it is the houses of Protestants that have been burnt down, that it is the property of Protestants that has been stolen, and that it is the land of
Protestants that has been confiscated? In ray own neighbourhood, I can call to mind five big houses, four of which belonged to Protestants and one to a Catholic. To-day, of those five houses the only one which is standing is the one which belongs to a Catholic. Every Irishman who has spoken this afternoon joined in the hope that this will be a just and lasting peace, but we have to remember that up to the present time it has not brought Ireland to a condition of peace and prosperity. Even if we do get a lasting peace, we shall have bought it at great cost. We shall have bought it by the sacrifice of 300,000 Protestants in the three Southern provinces of Ireland.
Now a word as to the Sinn Feiner of 1916, the Republican of 1920 and the Free Stater of 1922. None of these have ever said that they were going to hold out any particular hand of fellowship to the minority in the three Southern provinces of Ireland. On the occasion of former Home Rule Bills, Nationalist Members in those days used to declare that they wanted all Irishmen to work together for the good of Ireland, but there has been no hand of fellowship offered to us during the last 10 years, and I, personally, am very glad of it, because we know exactly where we stand. We have, therefore, got a remnant of 300,000 men, women and children who have got to make their choice as to whether they will clear out of the" country altogether or remain in Ireland as citizens of the Irish Free State. Apparently they are not to be the subjects any longer of Great Britain, and they will pay taxes without any further chance of representation in either of the two Irish Assemblies, and all that those of us who sympathise with the fate of these people can do now is to compensate them as far as possible in material ways for what they have suffered.
Very few know, and nobody in the House knows, how the Southern Irish loyalists have suffered during the last five or six years. It has been carefully hidden—I think rightly perhaps—by newspapers, the Government and public opinion generally. In a way it is wrong that what they have suffered should be hidden, as it has been, for this reason: It has been rather put; about by the late Government in reference to what was happening in Ireland; all these dis-
turbances and outrages were something in the nature merely of civil disturbance such as happened at the time of the White Boys, the Fenians or the Land Leaguers, though rather more acute or more dangerous. If we were so say that to any official Minister or member of the present Irish Assembly, he would repudiate it with indignation, and would say, "What we had during the last few years was the Anglo-Irish war, and in that Anglo-Irish war, on the whole, we came out victorious." That makes all the difference. There is all the difference between claims for compensation arising out of civil disturbance and those arising from an avowed state of war as there has been during the last two years. When my house was burned, was it done by what I may call a mob of angry peasants, who had suffered very greatly under me or under my forefathers before me, and at last joined in a sort of Jacquerie and burnt my house? Not a bit of it. It was done by order of the General Officer Commanding the Third Irish Division of the Republicans. He handed a signed notice to my caretaker to say that it was done by his order as a reprisal for the burning of certain houses by British troops, not in my county, but in the adjacent county of Limerick. I was told that the officer who gave the notice to my land steward did not even speak with a County Cork accent, but was a man from another part of the country.
Then there are instances of men and women who at the risk of their lives warned British troops and Royal Irish Constabulary of intended ambushes and thus saved their lives, and the houses of these people were burned down as a consequence. That is not civil disturbance, that is an act of war. Suppose that, as a result of the Great War, there had been a draw, and that neither the Entente nor the Germans had won, and that as a result of the peace settlement Alsace which had been devastated by the French and by the Germans in turn was erected into something in the nature of a Free State Government or Republic. It would not be a reasonable settlement when the Republic was set up to say that the Germans should recompense the French for damage suffered by them, and the French the Germans. That would be a ridiculous settlement; yet that is the settlement made in Ireland to-day with, to my mind, a most unjust result. In con-
nection with the claims against the British Government damage was done by the British troops to the amount of £2,500,000, and of that amount the British Government have already paid over £2,000,000. There has been a balance of damage done by Republican troops of something like £7,500,000, of which the Free State Government, up to date, have discharged less than £500,000, and that has been paid mainly, not to the victims, not to persons like myself or persons worse off than myself, because I have a roof over me, but to certain insurance companies. That is the position now. The British Government are paying for their damage, and the other side are not. It is a very unjustifiable state of affairs. Besides that, there is all the great damage which cannot be claimed for before the Shaw Commission or any county court in the case of those who had their houses burned, their land taken away, their cattle seized and their timber cut. There is no redress at all at present for them, though the Free State Government have given a sort of bond to do something. That is an unfair state of things. This House should do everything it can to do justice to these people.
I wish now to make an appeal to the Attorney-General on the question of citizenship. I have been requested during the last few days to represent to the right hon. Gentleman that, there is a great number of residents in the South of Ireland who have left that country and do not wish to return to it. They want to sell up all they have as best they can, and make a fresh start for themselves elsewhere. Is it the position, as it is in their opinion, that they will still, against their will, be Free State citizens? They do not want to acquire Free State citizenship. They do not want to go to any expense, trouble or worry in divesting themselves of the Free State citizenship, but they wish to remain simply British subjects. They asked me to put it to you—will it be necessary for them to take some measures to divest themselves of citizenship, and, if so, what will those measures be? Four hundred and four Members have been returned to this House, having signed a pledge sent to them to give every help to the Southern Irish Loyalists and do everything they possibly can to get fair treatment for the Loyalists of Southern Ireland. Now I
am asking them—and I am a Southern Irish Loyalist myself—if ever the opportunity arises to implement that pledge and to do everything in their power to have it carried into effect, and with that appeal I leave it in their hands.

Dr. CHAPPLE: The recital of the infamies mentioned by the hon. and gallant Member could be matched by similar recitals from this side of the House. But there is no use in entering into a competition of that kind. What he has told us is nothing more than the result of long resented wrong unredressed in Ireland. He is referring to a period of violence. We are looking forward to a period of peace, and I think that the events which he has so vividly described, and in which he has personally suffered, furnish no criterion of what will be the future of the South and West of Ireland. The South were provoked to violence and violence provoked violence in return. We hope that that period of Irish history will be closed definitely by the Act which we are passing to-day.
I did not rise, however, to comment on that. I simply want to ask a word or two-from the Attorney-General with regard to the Boundaries Commission. Are any appointments to that Commission anticipated, and does he contemplate any difficulty with regard to the appointment of a Commissioner by Northern Ireland? There is no provision under Clause 12 of the Bill for the appointment of a Commissioner in the event of Northern Ireland not appointing one, and I would like to know if Northern Ireland fails to appoint a Commissioner what action he proposes to take or what action is possible under the Bill? Then Clause 12 provides that the Commissioner is to take into consideration the wishes of the inhabitants. Will the right hon. Gentleman give an interpretation of that phrase, and say how the wishes of the inhabitants are to be acertained by the Commission, whether a plebiscite is to be taken, and if so what are the areas over which that plebiscite is to be taken? These are difficulties which have not been brought before the House during this Debate, and I would like to know whether any steps have been taken to set up the Commission, whether the right hon. Gentleman has in mind who the Commissioners are to be, and what instructions are to be given to the Commission in order to ascertain the wishes of the inhabitants?

Sir W. DAVISON: The hon. Member who has just spoken, after sympathetically referring to a speech by the hon. and gallant Member for Finchley (Colonel Newman), said, "After all, let byegones be byegones." I have every sympathy with that desire, but I do not think that we can divest ourselves of our responsibility by enunciating that pious hope. As has been pointed out by speakers from the South of Ireland, the Southern Loyalists have suffered terribly. I am not at the moment concerned to discuss whether any justification can be offered or not. The fact is that the Southern Loyalists have suffered terribly. Although it is not actually contained in the wording of the Treaty, it was an honourable understanding between those representing the Free State and the British Ministers representing this Government when the Treaty was signed, that protection would be given, if the Free State came about, to the Loyalists in Southern Ireland, both as to their lives and property. I understand that up to the period of the Truce decrees were obtained in the Trish Courts, mainly by the Southern Loyalists, to an amount of about £10,000,000 sterling, and that since the Truce further damage has been assessed to the amount of nearly £20,000,000 sterling. Before the House parts with this Bill I want to know whether that honourable understanding is in process of being carried out, what part of that £10,000,000 of pre-Truce claims has actually been paid, what part of the £20,000,000 of post-Truce claims has been dealt with by the Free State Government, and what amount is still outstanding. With regard to the outstanding amounts, what assurance have the British Government obtained from the Free State Government that they hold themselves responsible for making provision in respect of the damage to life and property which I have indicated? While I conclude, as I began, by saying that all parties desire that byegones should be byegones, and that we desire that there should be peace in Southern Ireland, still we cannot obtain that peace by the sacrifice of compensation for what has been suffered by the Loyalists in the South.

Mr. LYLE-SAMUEL: This bewildering Irish discussion is now reaching its fretful and rather feeble end. I think that the feeling shared by every party in the
House is one of profound thankfulness that we have, in the conclusion of the task on which we have been engaged, succeeded in removing Irish affairs from the control of the British Parliament. It is not a question of what the Loyalists in the South may have suffered or what those in the North may have suffered. There has also been prolonged political suffering here due to the fact that the position of Ireland and the interests of Ireland have been made a matter of party disputation in this House in the memory of all those who have been engaged in politics for the last two generations. But when we have accomplished this task let us not be satisfied that we have done anything of very positive worth. Too soon is the term applied that this is an Irish settlement. From the point of view of this House and the Government, it is not a settlement; it is a scuttlement. We are simply removing Ireland from the consideration of this Parliament and from the restraint of our laws and system, and we are merely saying that we can no longer concern ourselves with her problems, and that she must manage them as best she can. While I do not put the prospect too high, I think it should go forth from this House with absolute unanimity that, having tried by every policy which could be devised to serve Ireland, we are now trying to serve her best by leaving her entirely in charge of her own affairs. Not merely shall we make her a present of this prematurely described settlement, but we shall accompany it with the goodwill of all political sections at home.

The ATTORNEY-GENERAL (Sir Douglas Hogg): I think the House may congratulate itself upon the high level which has been maintained on all sides of the House in discussing this Motion, and especially, if I may say so, in the fact that, although we are no longer to have representatives here of constituencies in Southern Ireland, we shall still have men of Irish birth who will continue to assist our councils and to adorn our Debates as they have done to-day. A number of questions have been addressed to me, and I propose to deal with them shortly. The first question was one which I have tried to answer more than once. It is the question of Irish citizenship under Article 3. I would like to state quite definitely and
certainly that, in my judgment—and I think in the judgment of any responsible lawyer on either side of the House who examined the document—the fact that any person qualified so to do elected to accept Irish citizenship, does not in any way injure or affect his status as a British subject. He remains a British subject just as much as he would in Canada if he accepted the conditions which are made for the franchise there. The other point was whether or not we would legislate in England to ensure that Irishmen resident in England should get the franchise here only on the same terms as Englishmen resident in Ireland. My answer to that is that, although I have not discussed the matter with my colleagues in the Government, I do not for a moment suppose that they would assent to any such legislation being introduced. My own view is that all persons, from wherever they come, are entitled to the franchise on the same conditions, one with the other, in England, and that the question of the conditions on which their particular country of origin may give the franchise to Englishmen never enters into the matter at all. I should be sorry to make any departure from that principle in the solitary case of the Irish Free State.
I was asked several questions about the loyal minority and about the compensation to which they are entitled. With regard to the figures which my hon. Friend the Member for South Kensington (Sir W. Davison) asked for, I have not had any notice that he would require them and so have not furnished myself with them, but if he would be good enough to refer to a Debate which took place in another place only yesterday, he will find a speech of my Noble Friend the Secretary of State for the Colonies, extending over some six columns of the OFFICIAL REPORT, in which all the information for which he asks, so far as it is in the possession of the Government, is fully set out. With regard to the loyal minority generally, I would say what I think has been said before, that this Government recognises and recognises fully the very great hardships which undoubtedly they have sustained. We have not been blind to those hardships and we have not been inactive in regard to them. We have been in communication with the Irish Free State upon them and we have
the assurance of the Free State that it recognises its liability to make compensation for the injuries which have been received. I have been asked also as to the position of civil servants. The point of the hon. and learned Member for York (Sir J. Butcher), regarding pension commutation, was mentioned to me only this afternoon, but I think that if he will look at the Government of Ireland Act of 1920, which regulates the rate of compensation, he will find the Acts about which he is anxious expressly referred to and applied by Section 55, Sub-section (6) of that Act.

Sir J. BUTCHER: Under the Act of 1920 the British Government had to pay these pensions and the British Exchequer would be the proper authority to give commutation. Inasmuch as under the Treaty the Irish Government pays the pensions, would it be possible for the pensioner to get his commutation in England?

Sir D. HOGG: I do not think that from the moment of the passage of this Bill the British Government is going to be responsible for the pensions of civil servants transferred to Ireland. The point my hon. and learned Friend put, was, I believe, whether or not the Pensions Commutation Acts applied. I think the answer is that Article 10 of the Treaty provides that compensation is to be on terms at least as favourable as the 1920 Act, and, therefore, since the 1920 Act embodies those Acts, the same principle would apply when the Irish Government came to compensate. We were asked what we would do if the Irish Government failed to carry out its Treaty obligation, and did not give the compensation to which it was pledged. I want to say at once that the whole basis upon which we are bringing in this Bill, and asking the House to pass it, is the basis that the Irish Free State is loyally intending to carry out the Treaty. We are asking this House to legislate upon that hypothesis only. I do not think it would help to carry out the desire which I am sure my hon. Friends have just as much as we have, that that hypothesis should be maintained, if we proceeded in this Act of Parliament to provide for what was to happen if the Irish Free State failed to carry out what it has undertaken to do. I do not believe the Irish Free State means to fail in that respect. It is, of course, clear that if any breach of the Treaty were committed, it would be a matter of immediate concern for the Government, and that would apply just as
much to Article 10 as to any other Article. But I refuse to believe in or contemplate the prospect of the Irish Free State having any such intention.

Sir J. BUTCHER: The question I put was what steps the Government proposed to take to carry out the verbal promise repeatedly given by Ministers in the last Parliament, that if the Free State did not pay the British Government would pay.

6.0 P.M.

Sir D. HOGG: That is exactly the question which, as I endeavoured to point out, we are not considering. I am not considering, and do not pro- pose to consider—unless the House thinks I ought to— what we are to do to the Irish Free State if it fails to carry out its duties. We are confident it intends to carry out its duties, and although it would be a matter of immediate concern to this Government if it failed to do so, that is a prospect which I do not propose to contemplate. Some references have been made to the prospects of unity in Ireland. I do not propose to discuss this topic for the reason that I am sure, if unity in Ireland is to come, and is desired by both portions of the island, it will come much better without either party being preached at from this country and without any pressure being brought to bear on them.
This is an occasion on which the temptation to refer to the past is almost irresistible. I am glad to think it has very largely been resisted. I do not think it is profitable to go back to the past. That there have been failures in the; past I think we must all admit. I neither accept blame, nor do I desire to impute blame, for those failures. For myself, and I think I am speaking for the Members on this side of the House, we are looking to the future and not to the past. We believe and hope that the result of the new departure which this Bill enacts will be to wipe out memories of the past on both sides. The Southern Irish people have for many years demanded the control of their own destinies. By this Bill we are giving them that control. We are bestowing on them the same self-government as that under which our Dominions across the seas have built up their great and free communities. We are giving to them that same autonomy which those Dominions repay with that splendid loyalty and affection which we saw in the days of
the Great War. We on this side of the Channel will watch with sympathy and goodwill the efforts of the Irish Free State. We realise they are face to face with great difficulties. We believe they intend loyally to carry out their bargain just as we are endeavouring to carry out ours. We can only hope and pray that they will achieve the same measure of success as their great sister nations have already achieved. Is it too much I hope that in the course of time they may feel the same affection for Great Britain and the same pride in being members of the great community of nations which we know as the British Empire as the other Dominions who have fought for us and beside us; and that they may join with us whole-heartedly in that splendid union which makes up our proud and mighty Empire.

Dr. CHAPPLE: rose—

Mr. DEPUTY-SPEAKER (Mr. James Hope): Does the hon. Member wish to raise a point of Order? He has already exhausted his right to speak.

Dr. CHAPPLE: I wished to know whether the Attorney-General would reply to the question about the Boundary Commission?

Question, "That the Bill be now read the Third time," put, and agreed to.

Bill accordingly read the Third time, and passed.

TRISH FREE STATE (CONSEQUENTIAL PROVISIONS) BILL.

Bead the Third time, and passed.

KING'S SPEECH.

DEBATE ON THE ADDRESS.

Order read for resuming Adjourned Debate on Question [23rd November],
That an humble Address be presented to His Majesty, as followeth:—
MOST GRACIOUS SOVEREIGN,
We, Your Majesty's most dutiful and loyal subjects, the Commons of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, in Parliament assembled, beg leave to offer our bumble thanks to Your Majesty for the Gracious Speech which Your Majesty has addressed to both Houses of Parliament.

Question again proposed.

Ordered, That the Debate be now adjourned.—[Captain Racking.]

Debate to be resumed To-morrow.

HOUSING (UNEMPLOYMENT).

Motion made, and Question proposed, "That this House do now adjourn."—[Captain Hacking.]

Mr. LANSBURY: I wish to draw attention, on the Adjournment Motion, to the failure of the Government to propose legislation dealing with the question of housing. We heard during Question Time various answers by Ministers as to what it is proposed to do for the unemployed and as to the various methods of applying money for this purpose during the forthcoming year. I wish to call attention particularly to a difficulty in which local authorities find themselves when they attempt to deal with matters of his kind. The hon. Member for Hastings (Lord E. Percy) will remember that with myself, and other members of the Poplar Borough Council, he entered upon a campaign to raise money for building houses in Poplar and other places. As a result of that campaign, we in Poplar, poor as we are, produced between £50,000 and £60,000. We were told that money was to be ear-marked for the Borough of Poplar in order to extend the housing operations which had been commenced. We applied for that money to the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Swansea (Sir A. Mond) on many occasions, but it has never materialised. It is in the coffers of the London County Council or some other central authority. One of the things which take the heart out of local administrators is the fact that they can never take the word of those in charge of central offices of this kind. Men who are irreproachable in charge of private businesses, in ordinary life, seem capable of all kinds of dodges and tricks when it comes to dealing with public affairs. We in Poplar feel very sick indeed that we should have put up that money and yet are now unable to make use of it. The late hon. Member for Woolwich (Mr. W. Crooks) over and over again in this House and at the London County Council, called attention to some of the worst slums to be found anywhere in the metropolis. We want to get these slums away and we thought by subscribing to the housing fund we should be able to clear some of them away. I was mayor at the time we set up the Housing Committee, and we managed to get a Ministry of Health inquiry into the subject. By means of the Committee and the inquiry we condemned
a number of slums in our area. That is two years ago and though we have made persistent and repeated applications to the Minister of Health, on each occasion we have been told there is no money available, although the hon. Member for Hastings helped to collect £50,000 to be spent in our own district. We finally came to an arrangement that one tiny area should be cleared. It has taken nearly two years to get permission to-start negotiating to buy the property which we want to improve off the face of the earth.

Lord EUSTACE PERCY: What is the total sum spent by the Poplar Borough Council on housing since 1919?

Mr. LANSBURY: Probably between £100,000 and £150,000. I would remind the hon. Member that we had engaged to spend all that before he came upon the scene and with myself, got out of the pockets of the people this extra sum of money, which was to be spent in addition to what we were already spending. We must not have it go out that what we have spent has anything to do with the sum I am speaking of just now. The point I was making was that it has taken us nearly two years to get permission to buy the property. In the meantime the owner of the property has done his level beet to fob us off and now wants a sum considerably in excess of what we know we could have got the property for 10 years ago. It will in all probability take us another year before the time arrives when we will be able to tackle the matter. Hon. Members opposite often think that we on this side are rather bitter in our denunciations of landlordism. Our district, like every other district, suffers from ground landlordism. What is, I think, the most eligible site in the borough has lain vacant since long before the War. We have been done out of any rates from that land. It has been lying absolutely derelict. We want to buy. We were first asked over £6,000 for it. We then inquired what, it was valued at for the payment of duty, because the original owner had died, and we found that about one-third of that amount was what the owner's executors valued the land at when they had to pay duty upon it. We feel that the Minister of Health ought to have allowed us to get compulsory powers to acquire that land at the same value as that upon which the people who now own
it paid duty. Our people should not be exploited because of the necessity which exists for providing houses. A further point was that our rates suffer. We were the most highly rated district in the metropolis. [HON. MEMBERS: "Hear, hear!"]

Mr. J. JONES: We are not the highest!

Mr. LANSBURY: I am glad to hear we are not the highest. Misery likes company. The hon. Members opposite who cheered have at the back of their minds that we are an extravagant set, and so on. One thing we do not do. We do not pay £8,000 a year for an ornamental chief, as you voted for yesterday, but our rates, and the rates of every district like ours, are conditioned by the poverty of our district. We are in a vicious circle. We have the slum areas, and they produce an unhealthy population. If you take the medical officer's report for our Borough of Poplar, you will find that in the part where I live the sickness rate is much less than it is for those parts where the slum areas exist. The slum areas not only produce deterioration in the people who live there, but they pull down the standard of life of the others, because they have to pay to maintain them. I want the House to face up to this, that it is not merely a question of giving a certain number of the population better houses, but that when yon clear a slum you raise the whole status of the district altogether. You give everybody a better chance. We have been for 30 years trying to get some of these slums dealt with. I have told the House already that the late Mr. Will Crooks came to this House time and time again, and to the County Council.
You say we are impatient. Is it impatience that makes me say that I am sick and tired of the soft words and the promises that are made from that Treasury Box dime after time? When I heard the representative of the Minister of Health to-day, I said to myself, "I have heard that sort of thing for the last 30 years," and I want to ask whether you will not make up your minds this time that this business of housing must be tackled, and tackled resolutely, first for the sake of the people who are in the slums, and next in order that the children who are in those slums may have a chance. No child born in a slum really has a fighting chance.
It starts handicapped all through life, and you cannot get rid of that by your education. Look at the waste of the money you spend on education. You do not have to provide schools for the mentally deficient in St. George's, Hanover Square, but you do for Poplar, and Bethnal Green, and Canning Town, and those kind of districts, because the children there never have a chance. It would be economy for the nation to spend a big sum of money on this business of housing. It would be the finest expenditure that you could possibly enter upon. Further, you cannot expect that the people you do educate and who manage to get through are going to be fobbed off for ever with the kind of promises that you make.
The other day I came through Bethnal Green, the Brady Street area. I went through the district daily when I was a boy, and, except for one tiny patch, it is as it was when I was a boy, over 50 years ago, and men and women and children have been ruined, morally, spiritually and physically, all those years. The only place of any importance is the "pub." The only place for people to go to for light and comfort and company is the "pub." Little, miserable, narrow courts and alleys have existed there very nearly a century, and we are the richest country in the world. We spent millions in order to beat the Germans. Is it not worth spending millions to save the lives of these men, women and children 1 Is it not worth while that this country, of which we are all proud—because, much as you may think that I am a Little Englander, I am always proud to come back to England and feel that it is my country, where I was born, and that I belong to it—is it not worth our while, is it not worth while for those of you who are rich, to pour out your money for these, as you poured it out during the War? Is it not worth while making a great effort to give the people better homes, to give them better conditions, and at the same time to give work to those who are at present unemployed?

Mr. AMMON: I desire to put before the House the case for the housing problem from this side, and to make one or two suggestions that may be of assistance to the Government. The other day we listened in this House to a discussion on the unemployment problem. The subject I we have under consideration to-night is
not less important and is very closely allied with that problem, and it touches not only the unemployed, but also those who are actually in work and are housed—so-called—at the present time. I think I can do no better than put before the House some of the attempts made by the London County Council in their housing schemes, and how they were stopped by the last Government, and to ask that this Government should give some consideration to them. I propose also to show that this was not caused by any lack of funds, because we will be able to prove that, so far as the Council was concerned, they actually stopped because they had too much money. There is nothing in going into past history and reminding this House of how Members of the late Government made certain pledges at a certain time, which they have failed to redeem, but I suppose that one is right in reminding the present Government that they were in that Government and were responsible very much for the pledges that were made, and that the present Prime Minister and other Ministers on that Bench gave expression to pledges fully as strong as those given by the right hon. Member for Carnarvon Boroughs (Mr. Lloyd George). It is, therefore, fair to assume that, as they have succeeded to office, they have also succeeded to the responsibility for the pledges they gave to the country at that time. The present Prime Minister himself in 1918 said:
If we did not make every effort to improve the condition of the people, we should have a sullen, discontented, and perhaps angry nation, which would be fatal in the last degree to trade, industry, and credit.
The present Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies (Mr. Ormsby-Gore) in 1919 said:
I am not afraid that he (the President of the Local Government Board) will go too far in. the matter of coercion in carrying out this Bill (the Housing Bill) or in carrying out the powers which we all, I think, wish to see extended. There is no more crying evil in our 60cial scheme than the present housing conditions, and no more legitimate cause of discontent among the people, whether in the urban or in the rural districts. The housing conditions have, in many districts, become quite intolerable. … The problem is urgent, and it can only be solved by bringing the action of the State and of the public utility societies to bear.
Those gentlemen who made those speeches are now responsible Ministers of the
Government, and they are in a position to-day very much to honour those pledges and to ask that this House shall give them authority so to do; but one is disconcerted somewhat, because I have here a report of a speech delivered by the Prime Minister, who paid me the compliment of coming into my constituency during the recent General Election. Among other things, he talked about the problem of housing, because it had to be done in a constituency like Camberwell, where the people want to know something about it, and he said:
This is my idea. A national scheme of housing was perhaps necessary—indeed, probably necessary—after the war, but even all the efforts of those schemes did not product? anything like the number of houses per year that were produced before the War by private enterprise; and my idea is that if you are to get the best results you will only get them by making your scheme* aim at encouraging private enterprise, and not discouraging it.

HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

Mr. AMMON: I am glad to hear those cheers, because they must be rather embarrassing to the Prime Minister, for the promises and pledges given by both the present Prime Minister and the late Prime Minister were, on the accepted view of all parties in the House, that the problem was much too big and too important for private enterprise, and would have to be tackled as a part of the War charges of this nation, and met accordingly. Therefore, to come back and say that private enterprise is to be relied upon, when we have all around us evidences of its failure, and the fact that it took advantage of the necessities of the nation to exploit the nation, will not do. During the years of the War this House had to take steps to safeguard the country, not from the enemy without, but from the enemy within, who at the time of the nation's great distress and trouble were doing all they could to exploit the needs and necessities of the people. Equally then it was felt that some such defence would have to be put up against those who would exploit the nation's needs when it came to peace and to building houses for the heroes who were coming home. A very elaborate scheme was put before this House, and it is admitted now, on a conservative estimate, that at least 600,000 houses are due to be built in this country. The maximum number of houses built so far, in-
cluding those built by private builders under Government subsidy, and including those in hand, amounts to 218,154.
One cannot do better—and it may be taken as typical—than to view the situation as we sec it in London at the present time. When the Prime Minister was speaking in the Old Kent Road, famous in song and history, within a very short distance from the place where he spoke, there is a congested area of insanitary dwellings with a crowded population, and ns I told this House a little time ago, this gives rise to conditions of life that are almost incomprehensible in a civilised country. At the risk of shocking the House, I am going to repeat the incident that I saw which I gave on that particular oocasion, of two little children, whose combined ages would not make, up 12 years, in the open, attempting sexual relationship, one with the other. That was the outcome of the housing conditions —children having to live under such conditions, and see sights and hear things they otherwise would never see and hear. They are the direct result. In a recent case in the Courts there were two young people who came up on the charge of incest, and the magistrate, before committing them, made very definite and strong comments on the housing conditions in this country which were conducive of that state of affairs.
It is not any good us trying to hide these things and to say they do not exist. They are bound to go on, and one wonders they are not more widespread, having regard to the awful conditions. I paid a visit to one of the schools in my constituency the other day, and I made a remark about a little child, who, I thought, looked rather poorly, on how well she had nevertheless been turned out, and the teacher said that that child came from a place where 20 people were living in three rooms—adult people, with adult sons and daughters almost, having to sleep with their parents and mixing up in a way that never ought to be tolerated in any society that calls itself a civilised society, and yet, on the mere plea of economy, the housing schemes are being turned down. It would have been a far greater economy to have spent money out of the National Exchequer to house our people well, and so help them to recover their morale. You cannot remedy these things by mere cash
balances. I will go further. We would have done much better with the £90,000,000 we have spent in connection with Unemployment Insurance benefits if we had handed it over to local authorities and others, and if, further, we had paid men to keep in work rather than paid men to remain out of work. The Prime Minister interjected yesterday that he thought there was no difference between putting men on useless work and their doing no work at all. There is a tremendous difference, when it is a case of men gradually losing their morale, their skill as craftsmen and their independence by getting money for nothing. Everybody knows that if we gradually get into that position, there is bound to be a moral and spiritual deterioration. I have known men who have never been out of work for 20 or 30 years before, who have now got to a position that they do not care whether they get work or not. They did not start there; it is a condition that arises out of the situation.
In London the minimum need was found in a scheme that was presented to the Minister of Health in 1919, when it was shown that housing at least for 50,000 persons was needed to make up the normal requirements, without meeting any increase, and that requirements were being added to at the rate of 10,000 a year. In addition to that, there were in London at least 184,000 dwellings which were condemned as insanitary, and over and above that, 365,000 habitations that ought to be condemned and destroyed, but which just come within the ambit of the law. That was the condition of affairs in 1919. The London County Council submitted to the Ministry of Health a scheme in 1920 for building 29,000 houses to develop a suburb on the Becontree estate bordering on Romford, Dagenham and Ilford. A plant of £300,000 had to be laid down. The Ministry cut down the scheme to 3,000 houses, with this £300,000 plant super-imposed upon it. There is a waiting list of 23,000 persons who want housing accommodation, and that list was only open for a very few months, and does not, of course, represent the entire needs of people in this city for housing at the present time.
That is a pretty damaging indictment against the late Government, and against this Government if they perpetuate the system. The County Council then set out to raise the necessary funds. There
were people who said it would be impossible to raise the money. I see the Noble Lord the Member for Hastings (Lord E. Percy) in his place, and he will be interested in this, because he was Chairman, and responsible in the first instance for supervising this scheme. As a matter of fact, the scheme was shut down, not because the money could not be got, but because they got too much money. Nearly £4,000,000 was subscribed within a very short time. There is at least £1,000,000, on which 6 per cent, interest is now being paid, lying idle. Yet we were prevented by the Minister of Health from going on with this particular scheme. It is surely fair to suggest it is time that we gave renewed and additional consideration to this position. I had a letter this morning from a man in Brixton Gaol. He is in prison with four other persons, because he with those men seized a disused building in Peckham for the purpose of giving a man, his wife and seven or eight children accommodation. Those men were brought before the Magistrate and condemned to six months' imprisonment. I say it is a crying scandal and disgrace to this country. Those men are to be applauded, so far as I can see, for endeavouring to do the things we ourselves ought to have done in discharging our obligations. I raised a question in the last Parliament with regard to some other men who were sentenced to imprisonment because they prevented an eviction from a house which was in such a filthy, insanitary condition that the people had to be evicted. Within 20 minutes' tram ride of this House of Commons, there are houses where there is no separate sanitary accommodation, no separate water accommodation, and where the rain comes through the roof. There are plenty of these places to which I could take hon. Members, if they would care to see them, within a very narrow radius of this House, and they are occupied for the most part by the families of men whom you were cheering in the streets of London a few years ago.
It is absurd to think that we can approach this housing problem from a purely economic point of view. It cannot be done, and we have no right to con-eider it from that point of view. We have to consider it from the point of view that our people have got to be housed adequately if we are going to do anything
to hold our place among the nations of the world. Moreover, we shall be spending our money quite well if we put men into employment, for it will help to maintain their morale, and get flowing the current of commerce in this country. We may take it for granted that for a good while to come our ordinary foreign trade is going to 6uffer very badly, and probably has gone for some time. We have, therefore, to develop our position here, and we should be doing better to keep our men in good morale and good working efficiency, adding to the capital of the country at the same time by building these houses, and carrying out the schemes to which we have been pledged. County councils and borough councils are prepared and anxious to go on with their housing schemes, but all along the line they are finding themselves crippled by the Government Departments refusing to give them the necessary assistance, which must come, because the areas that need it most are those in the greatest poverty, and in point of fact the charges have been too heavily placed upon them. This surely ought to be regarded as a War charge, and met from the National Exchequer.
We might also have done something with regard to people who were profiting at the nation's expense some time ago ii we had adopted the same attitude as that which was taken up with regard to material for war supplies, and set up some sort of Committee which would haw gone into the question of costings, and found out how far they were exploiting the community. I suggest that that sort of thing has got to be done in this case. It is time that we gave an earnest to the country that we mean business. We had far better spend the money which we are paying in Unemployment Insurance by putting men to build houses. This afternoon we heard that those who lead in the ranks of the unemployed in this country are in the building trade. Hero, at a moment of the world's history when there-is so much work to be done, we never had so many people out of employment. That is not because of any lack of liquid capital. Calls for gilt-edged stock are over-subscribed again and again. We in the County Council, as I said, had no difficulty in raising our money, and could have got millions more if we had gone on. If people will not help in one way to provide healthy houses and re-organise
the nation, there will have to be other means found to make them do so, and to see that they play their part in honouring the obligations to the men who fought and suffered. Now it is their turn to pay up, and help put these men in the position in which they ought to be. I hope the Prime Minister's statement that he is going to rely on private enterprise will be viewed in this House with considerable alarm. It is the poor man who wants his house built. At the present time it cannot be done perhaps on economic lines, but it must and ought, to be done, and the nation itself ought to pay for it.
That is our case, and a case which, I hope, is going to receive sympathetic consideration from the other side, and not be jeered out of court and treated as something impracticable. It can be done the moment this House says it shall be done, and if we cannot move private people to do it, the Government itself ought to carry it through. They could have done it had they not been in such a hurry so soon after the War to scrap the machinery of industries in the interests of private enterprise. We had all the plant and opportunities for doing the work. I am told by experts that we are now within 20 per cent, of being able to build houses and let them at an economic rent. I am told by those in a position to know that a house can be built now for £400 plus overhead charges. At the same time, there is not the slightest doubt that the moment we set about doing it, great capitalists will seize the opportunity to try to send up the cost of materials. The Government, therefore, will have to take steps to safeguard the interests of the community, check costings and books, and see that only a fair return is allowed on the money, and that the great need of the nation receives attention at the earliest possible moment.

Lord EUSTACE PERCY: As I have bees, referred to by both the hon. Gentlemen who have spoken, I think, perhaps, I ought to say something in reply. I do not by any means complain of those references, and I hope my hon. Friend—if he will allow me to call him so—the Member for Bow and Bromley did not refer particularly to me—

Mr. LANSBURY: Hear, hear!

Lord E. PERCY: —when he spoke of the dodges of which people were capable in public affairs which they would never dream of perpetrating in private affaire. But I think that the hon. Member for Bow and Bromley is perfectly justified in raising this question from the point of view in Poplar, because of one circumstance which I should like to tell the House, and which does indicate the kind of position in which public men have been placed by the chops and changes in Government policy.
When the housing bond campaign in London was begun, several of the boroughs in London did not take part. In Poplar, I think I am right in saying, the vast majority of the people there who were supporters of the hon. Member for Bow and Bromley, who was then Mayor, were strongly against that borough having anything to do with the housing bond campaign. The hon. Member, however, as mayor, took the line with all his supporters that, while he disagreed with the methods of the Government's policy, he intended to support the scheme, and he did support it throughout. He was, if I may say so modestly, of the very greatest assistance to me as chairman of the campaign. It is natural that, having put himself in that position, he should feel that he has been seriously let down —to use the slang phrase—by these chops and changes in Government policy. That being said, I think that the hon. Member rather misstated—quite unintentionally— the position of the case in regard to the money raised in Poplar. In the first place, the campaign to raise that money took place in the summer of 1920, but building in Poplar, as in the rest of London, and the, rest of the country, certainly did not begin a moment before the summer of 1919

Mr. LANSBURY: As to when our building commenced I can only take the date before I left for Russia. It was in January.

Lord E. PERCY: January, 1919. Between January, 1919, and the summer of 1920–I am sorry to bother the House with these details—but great as was the energy of the authorities in Poplar at that time, I do not think they can have actually spent the borrowed money—

Mr. LANSBURY: We have not spent it, but we borrowed it.

Lord E. PERCY: My recollection of the case is this, that when the campaign began there were many liabilities on their schemes in respect to which they were looking for help to the London County Council, and that the whole of that £60,000 was not to be spent entirely on new schemes. However, that fact is not important.

Mr. LANSBURY: That is really my point.

Lord E. PERCY: I want to say this— and I hope the Government will make a not* of this fact—if any obstacle is being placed by the Government in the way of that money being spent in Poplar then, in view of the purpose for which it was raised, I think the Government ought to reconsider the question. Any such obstacle would be a distinct breach of pledge, a breach of honour which could not be defended for one single moment. But I think the hon. Member opposite will admit that that is hardly the state of the case. The Ministry of Health has refused authority to new schemes in Poplar, not because they are unwilling that Poplar should incur a capital liability of £60,000, but because they are unwilling to pledge the National Exchequer for any deficit which would accrue on those schemes for 60 years to come. I do not think that the fact that Poplar contributed this money can be held to obligate the National Exchequer to pay a deficit on housing schemes, no matter what that deficit may be. I think it is necessary to put that point quite clearly, because the hon. Member for North Camberwell (Mr. Ammon) made the same mistake. He said the London County Council had raised more than enough to carry on their schemes. That is perfectly true, but they have not raised money to pay the deficits. That is the thing that is holding up housing in London and in the country. No good can be gained by ignoring that fact, and stating the case as if the only thing necessary was for the local authority to raise a capital sum sufficient to build houses. That is only the beginning, and, incidentally, of course, none of that £4,000,000 was raised for the schemes of the London County Council. However, that is another matter.
Having dealt with these particular points about London, I should like to say something in general upon this
problem. Both hon. Members opposite, especially the second hon. Member, have spoken of the pledges given by the late Government at the General Election of 1918. The hon. Gentleman painted a picture of the way in which these pledges had been departed from. I quite agree with that picture. I quite agree that the making of these pledges compared with the performance has been laments able. But I draw a somewhat different conclusion to the hon. Gentleman opposite. The conclusion that I draw is a distrust of very large statements of high intentions, and statements of the desperate need for houses such as we have heard this afternoon from the benches opposite—statements, though, with which we all sympathise. One distrusts a policy set on foot with the waving of flags and the beating of drums. Distrusting all that, one realises that it is much easier to have a policy than to find a practical means of carrying that policy out. Anyone who has had direct connection with any housing schemes under the assisted housing scheme of the late Government knows that in 1921, when the schemes were cut down, we were coming to an absolute deadlock. It was impossible, physically impossible, to go on much longer on that scale and to find the money. That was the practical experience of every administrator, to whatever political party or school he belonged. That was because the scheme was fundamentally on wrong lines. We differ as to where the wrongness might come in; but the question now before us is what other policy are we to have? It is no good reviving old schemes. That is, after all, behind most of the speeches we have heard from benches opposite. It is for the old schemes to go on, with certain new aspects like commandeering empty houses, controlling building materials, and so on. This I will deal with in a moment. If the old schemes are to go on, then I submit there is absolutely no hope along those lines.
In the first place we have only built, comparatively, very few houses, and we only had in hand very few houses by the time the scheme was cut down in 1921. During the period every local authority in the country had been working day and night to get housing schemes started, and during two years, comparatively, few schemes were started.
Why; Because you cannot put through the machinery of the local authorities more than a certain amount of business. That always seems to me to be the fundamental practical objection to those doctrines of State control which are put forward by hon. Members opposite. They ignore the fact that you cannot put more than a certain volume of business through a given number of local authorities, or a given number of organisations of any kind. That is precisely where every private company invariably breaks down when it tries to extend its activities into all sorts of channels. So the system of local government for the housing scheme broke down simply through congestion of business. Where you have congestion in local business, such as I have described, you get inefficiency and extravagance. That is the first thing to remember about the housing policy of the future. It has got to be a policy which enlists all agencies, and not merely the agency of local government. If you are going physically to put through the work of building 600,000 houses, it means that you have got to employ every agency, public or private, in this country. That is the first point in any new housing scheme.
What is the place of Government action in housing? I see opposite the hon. Member for one of the divisions of Glasgow who gave us a very interesting address the other day as to how impossible it was under the present social system to avoid unemployment and similar evils. Therefore, he said, we; must look to an entirely new social system. Now I am not going to deal with what we might possibly or conceivably do under a hypothetical social system such as no man has ever seen in operation in the world, except; in a limited way in Russia, which none of us wish to—

Mr. STEPHEN: But you see the effect of the present social system in operation.

Lord E. PERCY: Precisely. You see the present system in operation in housing. But we cannot deal now with an entirely hypothetical system. I have to assume that we have to do something about housing in the next two or three years, and I am confining my remarks to what we are to do under the present system. The hon. Member for North
Camberwell (Mr. Ammon) suggests that-private enterprise has broken down and that the Government should take the lead in this matter of housing. He suggests that that would be the best solution of this question if you can only control the producer of building material. It is obvious that if you control prices you must control wages. I am not going to enter into any recrimination as to what was responsible for the high cost of building in the past. It is no good to enter into that. In the future if you are going to control prices, as you did during the War, you will have to control wages. In the second place under what conditions were those great War fortunes made to which hon. Members opposite have so often referred I They were made during the War. Profiteering took place during the War. [HON. MEMBERS: "And after."] Hon. Members talk about the War fortunes. The hon. Member for Bow and Bromley mentioned the matter. But under what conditions were those fortunes made? Under conditions of purely private enterprise? On the contrary, under public control and fixed prices. The phenomena can be studied in many countries, in America, where the same system was put in force. It is perfectly obvious to anyone who will follow a logical line of thought for a moment that the first effect of any control of prices must be to increase the profit of a certain proportion of fortunate producers, because you have got to fix your price to bring in what the economists call the marginal producer. That is the producer under the worst conditions and with the lowest efficiency.

Mr. FISHER: Hear, hear!

7.0 P.M.

Lord E. PERCY: I am glad to see that I have the approval of my instructor in economics, the right hon. Member for the Combined English Universities. I think it is true, admitting the profits made on building material since 1919, that large as those profits were in many cases, they were much lower on the average than the profits made by similar businesses under a system of Government control in the latter years of the War. I believe that can be fairly well proved. It must be remembered that while the independent committees appointed by the Government to examine into the charges of profiteering in building material found
serious profiteering in one or two cases, their general conclusions did not bear out Any general or sweeping charge of very high and abnormal profits being made owing to the formation of rings. Therefore, I think the hon. Member for North Camberwell, in putting forward a scheme of Government control as the panacea for this housing question, is offering to the people of this country something which is as much Dead Sea fruit as were the promises of the Government in 1918. I hope hon. Members opposite will learn from that terrible example, and will be careful of offering as a panacea any scheme of that kind, which may break in their hands at a future day when they have the opportunity of trying it.
What, then, is the position of public authorities now? It is obvious that while they can build new houses up to a certain point, the main burden of building new houses must fall upon private enterprise. But, and this is quite enough for all the local authorities in this country, conversely, the only possibility and prospect of clearing slums is by the action of local authorities. If local authorities will concentrate on that they will find that the burden of work thrown upon them will be quite as much as they or their officials can bear. [An HON. MEMBER: "Give us a panacea!"] I am not dealing with panaceas. There is this point to be remembered about the slum clearance schemes: they can never be economic in the proper sense of the term.

Mr. WALLHEAD: The public authorities must stand the loss of clearance, while the other people make the profit.

Lord E. PERCY: I do not understand the hon. Gentleman. This is a question of local authorities building. The local authorities are not going to make a profit, therefore, this business has got to be financed either out of the rates or out of the taxes. Before the War, in London, our slum clearance schemes were financed out of rates. I think, however, that the Government will agree that it is impossible to expect local authorities to finance the amount of slum clearance work that ought to be done purely out of the rates. The question, then, is what sum of money are the Government prepared to place at the disposal of local authorities
in order to assist them in slum clearance schemes? If I remember aright, the late Minister of Health, the right hon. Member for West Swansea (Sir A. Mond). stated that the Government were prepared to place either £1,000,000 or £500,000–I cannot remember which—at the disposal of local authorities for such schemes. I wish to ask the Government—though I know they have had such very short notice of this Debate that I cannot expect an answer now—how much money has actually been pledged in that way out of that total sum? Secondly, I want to ask them whether they are prepared to state afresh, on their own responsibility, what is the amount of money they are prepared to devote to this object in future?
I believe—and this is where I distrust so much the flag waving and drum beating schemes—that a comparatively small sum of money can, at present building prices, stimulate slum clearance schemes if it is properly distributed and allocated by the Minister of Health, to a far greater extent than most people have any idea. There is a tremendous local demand for such schemes at the present moment, and a very small grant from the Exchequer will stimulate them to an enormous degree. It is absolutely essential, however, if that money is to be spent to the best possible advantage, that in this case, at any rate—although we dislike giving discretion beyond a certain point to Ministers—that the Minister should have control over that money and should allocate it to local authorities according to his discretion and the knowledge of his Department where it is most needed. The one thing which will destroy any possibility of such a scheme being a success at all will be if hon. Members of this House feel obliged, in this House and out of it, to press for a certain amount of money each for their own constituencies, that every constituency shall have its quota of the £1,000,000, or whatever sum is placed at the disposal of the country. The first and last result of any such pressure of that kind is logrolling and inefficiency. If the House will exercise its self-restraint in the matter, a small sum, properly allocated according to the discretion of the Minister, will go an enormous way to stimulate this work.
Other points have been mentioned, such as the commandeering of empty
houses. That is a matter which must depend very largely upon the report of the Rent Restrictions Act Committee, so I will say no more on that point. I say this in conclusion, that we do expect from the Government, not any flag waving and drum beating schemes, but a considered policy and the expenditure of a certain amount of money, especially on slum clearance. We expect the devising of a policy in regard to the building of new houses that will encourage private enterprise, while strengthening the powers of local authorities in regard to town planning and the arrangement of the areas in which private enterprise is to build those houses. That last is a large question, into which I cannot enter at the moment; but we do expect these things from the Government. I am glad that we are to have a reply on this Debate from the Solicitor-General who, I think, in almost the last speech he made in this House in the last Session of Parliament—I do not want to remind him now of any indiscretions of the past, but I am sure he does not regard this particular quotation as an indiscretion—made the strongest plea for a forward policy by the Government in he-using. Of that, without anticipating any specific promise from him to-night, we expect him in general words to give us an assurance.

Mr TREVELYAN THOMSON: The House will probably entirely agree with the Noble Lord who has just spoken, in his conclusion as to the need there is for an advanced policy on slum clearance, but I am afraid he was not so potent in regard to the building of those new houses which surely must precede the clearing of slums. How is it possible, when you have an existing shortage, to demolish other houses before you build new? The Noble Lord said that he suspected considerably the statements that were made from this side as to the desperate need. I am astonished at anyone who has connection with local government can suspect the desperate need which exists throughout the length and breadth of the country.

Lord E. PERCY: The hon. Gentleman must realise that what I said was that I distrusted speeches about our high intentions and desperate needs as a basis for solving the problem in practice. Of course, I am impressed by our desperate need.

Mr. THOMSON: I am grateful to the Noble Lord for correcting me, but I took his words down as he said them. I am sorry if I misunderstood him. His suspicions were not of the desperate need, but of the uses that were made of it. With regard to the need, the two previous speakers from this side of the House dealt authoritatively with the position in London. What they said with regard to London was equally true of the provinces. A return was made, under the Housing Act of 1919, by all the local authorities of the country. According to that official return, there was a need existing in 1919 of 800,000 houses. That, surely, is a desperate need. I know that figure was called in question by members of the late Government when they were anxious to write down their commitments, but I put it to the House that it must be very nearly that total.
During the period of the War all house building was stopped, and rightly so; we had to concentrate the whole of the energy of the nation on armaments, and there was no room left for the building of houses. Those who are acquainted with the building trade know that in previous years the average of new houses built over a considerable period has been something between 70,000 and 80,000 houses. If, therefore, you put a bar on the erection of all houses for a period of five years, you get at once a shortage, due to that cessation of building, of over 400,000 houses. We know, according to the Land Inquiry instituted by the late Prime Minister, that in 1913 there was a considerable shortage of houses owing to the lack of private enterprise to fill the bill in the earlier years. From this it is perfectly reasonable, to assume that the figures given by the local authorities of a shortage of over 800,000 houses in that year can be substantiated by a comparison with other sources. It has been suggested, when trying to demolish those figures, that the returns of population for the last decennial period show a decrease, and that therefore as many houses are not required now as before. A moment's examination, however, will show that that decrease was mainly one in the birthrate during the period of the War. During the last 10 years the marriage rate, which is surely the crux of the demand for houses, and the test of what you require in the way of new homes, was considerably above the average of any previous 10
years. If you take the Registrar-General's figures for the three years from 1919–1921, you find there over 1,000,000 marriages. That, in itself, is evidence of the need of, at any rate, 1,000,000 new homes. Therefore, I submit that although you may have a decrease in the net rate of the population, the effective demand for houses has not been decreased because the marriage rate during that 10 years shows a much greater increase than in previous periods.
I do not think the House will contest the need. In my own town of Middles-brough we required over 3,000 houses to make good the shortage, and we have been allowed to build only 600 or 700 houses. According to a house-to-house canvass of the whole town made last year, over 25 per cent, of the population are living in a state of overcrowding with two or more people in each room, and there are over 1,000 families who have not got a house of their own, and who have to share one small house with other families, and in some cases there are as many as five families living in one house. We are told that the Government must curtail their housing programme. I think it is unfortunate that at a time like this the House should be deprived of the services of a Minister of Health. It is unfortunate that we have no one on the Front Bench who directly represents the Minister of Health. I trust that the Government do not expect us to take that as an evidence of the importance which they attach to health and housing conditions.
We were told to-day that there are only 12,000 houses still to be sanctioned under the late Government's scheme. Is that really the whole contribution which the Government have to offer to this problem, which, as previous speakers have said, is not merely an economic but a moral problem? It is absolutely impossible for young children and healthy families to be brought up with a proper sense of morality and decency under the present overcrowded conditions which are characteristic of all our industrial towns. In many cases you have both sexes living and sleeping in the same room. In this way we are gradually piling up not only physical but moral ill-health, which will cost the country a good deal in the future. There has been no reference to any reform in that direction or any indication
as to what the Government are prepared to do.
The Noble Lord the Member for Hastings (Lord Eustace Percy) was very scathing about what local authorities could do, and he said that under the scheme of the late Government they produced very few houses, and he put that forward as evidence of their inability to handle the question. He told us that we can only get a limited amount of work done through the local machinery, and that you cannot depend upon local authorities. The analogy he drew between the work of public authorities and private enterprise will not hold good. Before the War the Admiralty and the War Office were not equal to the needs of our protection, but during the War they rose to the occasion and the same machinery proved equal to dealing with a problem which staggered humanity. If the existing machinery could be made to achieve this result when producing things to destroy, surely the same, machinery and enterprise could be used when local councils are dealing with the housing problem. There is absolutely no reason why they cannot enlarge their activities if they are given an opportunity. Hon. Members seem to think that in asking this I am ignoring private enterprise. May I point out that private enterprise is carrying out building under the Government schemes and you also have the competition of private enterprise. The State is not building the houses, but it is being done by private enterprise, and they are doing it with State assistance and the assistance of the local authorities, and that is considerable.
I do not think anyone suggests that the bureaucracy of the Minister of Health should be continued, and we can do this work very well with less red tape and oversight. We want more freedom and elasticity, and I suggest that local authorities should have a more free hand than they have had in the past, and should be allowed to work out their own salvation. How can private enterprise fulfil our needs? How can it provide the 500,000 houses which are still required in order to provide decent homes for the people? Why has private enterprise not done this work in the past? If private enterprise is the real solution of all these evils, why has it not built the houses we require since the War? If
private enterprise can do this work better than the State or the local authorities without assistance, why have they not done it? They have had a free hand and there has been no restriction upon private enterprise during the last couple of years. They have had perfect freedom to buy and to build.
Up to quite recently £400 or £500 has been the lowest price at which a house can be built. Who is going to erect hundreds and thousands of workmen's cottages at a cost of from £400 to £500? Hon. Members know that such cottages cannot be let at an economic rent, and as long as things remain as they are it will be impossible for private enterprise to build these houses, because the inducement for them to do so is not sufficient. Take the cost at £400 or £500. A man wants a return on his money, and he does not want to wait 60 years. He wants a quick return and a profit on his money. I think experts in the building trade sitting opposite will agree that you require 8 per cent, interest on your £400 before you indulge in supplying workmen's houses. Let us take £400 at 8 per cent. You require a rent of 12s. 4d. a week to clear that cost without rates. Who is there to-day who is going to build houses on which he will have to get 12s. 4d. a week at the present time? It is not a sound business proposition in the way of private enterprise, and therefore I submit that private enterprise cannot supply the houses we require during the next few years.
In the second place, we cannot afford to wait. The social arid moral needs of the community demand that the houses shall be put up. What, therefore, is the solution? In so far as the State has caused the shortage by stopping building operations during the War, the State is responsible for the shortage, and it is perfectly reasonable that the State should regard this as a burden and duty left to it by the War, and in order that this abnormal shortage should be made good, there should be State assistance to make up for the shortage which now exists. How should that assistance be given? I would suggest to the Government that they should not proceed on the old lines of the bureaucracy of the Ministry of Health, but leave local authorities to work out their own salvation, and give them assistance by guaranteeing loans at
a reasonable rate of interest which will enable them to build houses which they can let at an economic rent, and let the State bear the cost of the difference between what it charges local authorities and what it has to pay for the loans.
This cannot be done on a sound financial basis, and there must be a loss. I submit that the loss should not fall on the local authorities because the shortage is not due to any fault or negligence on their part, but it is the result of the War, and should be met nationally as a war charge. I suggest to the House that it would be a perfectly sound proposal that the Government should offer to local authorities to provide or guarantee £300 on every house that they built up to the 500,000 houses which are required to make good the shortage, and they should find that money at 3½ per cent, repayable over a period of 60 years. Then the local authorities should find the balance. I would not suggest that the whole of the money should be provided by the State because that would put a premium on extravagance. I would leave the local authorities to find the rest of the money and the less they have to pay for the erection of the houses the cheaper it will be to the local authorities, and this would be an inducement towards economy. They could borrow money locally at not more than 5 per cent. They would then get £300 from the Government at 3½ per cent, and £100 or £150 locally at 5 per cent., and then a rent of 6s. a week would clear them of their standing charges on these 500,000 houses. The only loss would be the difference between the 33 per cent, at which the State would lend or guarantee the loans and what would have to be paid, and I do not think the loss would be more than l½ per cent. In this way the State would secure an efficient remedy against disease, which is going up by leaps and bounds owing to the overcrowded conditions existing in our large towns.
To-day we are spending £2,000,000 a year in remedial measures for tuberculosis and we are also spending on health services some £40,000,000 a year. What is another £2,250,000 per annum to prevent the waste that is going on and to arrest disease which is so prevalent? I submit purely on the grounds of pounds, shillings and pence no money could be more wisely spent than in providing the difference between the economic rent of the local authority and the amount the
State would have to pay by lending money at this cheap rate of interest. We cannot leave things as they are, and so far as new houses are concerned this would provide an effective and economic way out of the difficulty.
With regard to slums, private enterprise will never deal with that problem. It cannot be solved on economic lines. You must face this problem as a national responsibility. We have neglected our duty in this respect in the past, and instead of spending a beggarly £200,000 a year dealing with slums, ten times that amount would not deal adequately with the problem. The business man does not expect the same plant and machinery to supply his needs for 50 or 60 years and the old machinery is scrapped and pulled down and written off the balance sheet. The State must do the same with regard to the houses which are decrepit and worn out in the service of those who use them. We have to realise our responsibility for the slums and congested areas, as otherwise we shall reap the reward of neglect in ill-health and sickness. I appeal to the Government to at once tackle the question of providing more houses in order to prevent sickness and ill-health becoming rampant among us, and so as to ward off those moral dangers which will be laid to our charge as a community if we do not face our responsibilities.

Mr. LORDEN: The voice of the hon. Member for Middlesbrough (Mr. T. Thomson) is a different voice to that with which he spoke in the last Parliament. His ideas on housing have evidently received some very violent shocks. In the last Parliament the hon. Member dealt with the question on absolutely uneconomic lines; apparently he did not care what the cost was. That has been the whole difficulty of the problem in the past. It was the thing which caused the housing schemes of the late Government to fail. They ignored economic conditions. If they had allowed the matter to be dealt with by private enterprise, side by side with the local authorities, there would have been many thousand more houses to-day than there are. There is not the slightest doubt that the Prime Minister has intimated how this problem will have to be attacked. It will have to be attacked by the local authorities dealing with slums and by private enterprise which provided nearly all the houses
before the War. [An HON. MEMBER: "And the slums as well!"] From 70,000 to 80,000 new houses are required year by year. The hon. Member has suggested that the Government should find a certain amount of money. I do not think much objection can be raised to the Government finding some of the money, and in the suggestion that they should provide a certain proportion of the capital required there is the germ of something good. But if you leave it to the local authorities entirely the scheme will fail. You will have to bring in private enterprise, and if you do that you can lend to private builders money in the same way as it is proposed to advance it to local authorities, and then there will be the advantage that the loan will provide an incentive to get the work done. There is no incentive to the local authorities to get it done, and that is why schemes have failed in the past.
I have taken part in much of the controversy in this House on the housing question, and I have said all through that more houses are required. I have also declared that we want them cheaper and more quickly than they have been produced up till the present. It is admitted that the Act which came into force in the middle of 1919, and which constituted a bribe to the local authorities, resulted in extravagant administration without securing the houses which one was entitled to expect would be provided. It has been suggested that at least 500,000 more houses are needed. It is a very great mistake to over-state your case. I believe if we could get 300,000 additional houses at the present time it would more than fill the bill. I have been on housing; committees and know something of how the lists of applicants for these new houses are made up. We have had it suggested that the London County Council has a waiting list of 23,000 applicants! But when you come to analyse the names what do you find? You discover that 50 per cent, are people who want to get out of their present houses into the subsidized Houses so as to reap the advantage of the subsidy which the Government have been giving to the local authority.

Mr. AMMON: The London County Council have a regulation that in every instance ex-service men should have a first claim on the new houses.

Mr. LORDEN: That does not do away with my point. I was speaking of the applicants for new houses. I quite agree that the London County Council and other local authorities are looking into these things, but I repeat that when the lists come to be analysed it is found that a large proportion of the applicants merely want to leave their present houses in order to get the advantage of the subsidised, houses. I had a list before me not very long ago in a borough in which I am interested, and in that list I found that more than 50 per cent, of the applicants desired to get out of their present houses, which were not up to date but, still, were very good houses, and to enter into possession of the houses on which a subsidy had been paid. Every one of the houses put up under these schemes is an incubus to-day and the taxpayer is finding a sum ranging from £1 to 30s. per week in respect of each of the houses. That is a very serious thing.
Under the scheme private enterprise should have been brought in side by side with the local authority under, of course, proper supervision. I am not an advocate for bad houses. I like a nice house for myself and I believe in other people having nice houses. I say that by private enterprise only can you hope to get such houses on reasonable lines. If you start new socialistic schemes of community-owned houses, there are so many people grabbing for them that the scheme must result in failure.
In February, 1919, I was a member of a housing committee to which a certain firm of builders camp and said, "You want houses. We have the land, and we have the sewers and drains already laid, we have the plant and some of the material. We were building these houses before the War at £300 per house. We find we cannot build them to-day under £600. We cannot afford to put these houses up as we should have to ask such a largo rent, and we make this suggestion —that you or the Government or the local authority should provide £150 of the £600 and we will then put the houses up and allow five per cent, for a number of years on that £150 to be provided out of rent." They effered to build 600 houses by Christmas, 1919, and if that offer had been accepted it would have largely solved the housing problem in that particular
borough. In company with the housing surveyor I saw Dr. Addison and submitted the scheme to him. He took two or three days to consider it and then turned it down, because he said the community must own the houses. In a later Bill which was passed by the House houses were allowed to be purchased. And I believe some houses have been purchased by the local authority for over £900, with the result that the taxpayers have to pay something like £l a week subsidy in respect of each house. If the Minister of Health at that time had had the broad vision to see that this was going to solve the problem, there is not the slightest doubt the houses would have been put up. It was a wicked thing to turn the scheme down and then to purchase houses at the taxpayers' expense, as has been done quite recently. We failed to get the houses. The Minister of Health was informed at the time that it would take at least two years before the local authority could provide them and, as a matter of fact, over two years elapsed before any number of houses were obtained. There were at that time in the neighbourhood of London miles and miles of streets which had been laid out prior to the War, but the Government would not use those schemes, preferring to go in for some elaborate scheme of its own. May I ask, are the houses that have been put up handsome houses? Are you satisfied with them? Many of them are what I would call mere bandboxes. A man, like myself, could not get into some of the rooms. In connection with the London County Council Roe-hampton Estate, if the cost of the roads and sewers is added to the cost of building, the cost of the houses works out in the neighbourhood of from £1,500 to £1,700 per house. I agree with the hon. Member who cries "Shame!"
Someone has been talking about building material. What is the trouble? They were paying 6d. per thousand for the clay with which to make bricks, and the British working man got a very large share of the money which the bricks cost. Did that working man give a fair day's work for his high wages? That is where your schemes largely broke down. It was a case of high cost and low production. I had the privilege of presiding over two Profiteering Committees with regard to building material. In the Vote Office will
be found the Reports of those Committees. It was suggested that rings had been formed and that people were getting unfair rates of profit. I advise hon. Members opposite to read some of the Reports of the Committees on Profiteering. There they will learn that whilst 6d. per thousand was paid for the clay which was turned into bricks, bricks which pre War sold at 23s. per thousand increased in price to £4 or £5 per thousand. Where did the extra money go? It went in labour. I did not go into this inquiry for amusement. I myself was under the impression that profiteering was going on. But when I came up against this question of bricks I found where the money was going. If hon. Members will read these Reports they will inform their minds. We suggested in our Report that wherever an association of manufacturers controlled 60 per cent, of the output of a given industry, the Board of Trade should insist on their publishing, first, the wages they were paying, secondly, the amount of profit made, and thirdly, the amount of turnover. If that had been done there would have been no profiteering because public opinion would have been so adverse to anything of the kind, and it would have been possible to see at once whether and where profiteering was going on.
This Government has got to do something with regard to housing, but I hope it will be on practical lines. I take it that most of us are desirous that the people shall be properly housed. I will not deal with slums, because that matter has been dealt with otherwise, but we want to see that people have proper houses to live in. We want, however, to see that neither the builder nor those who are employed in the work have an unfair profit. There should be a reasonable profit to everyone and a fair wage. I have always stood for that all my life, and I stand for it to-day. But when you have a fair wage, it is only reasonable— (An HON. MEMBER: "What is a fair wage?"] That is a matter of opinion. I suppose it is as much as you can get and a little bit more. I say, however, that if a man produces sufficient he should have more. If a man produces a large quantity of work, I would increase his pay materially. But to-day, unfortunately, we bring everyone down to the plane of the slowest worker. [HON. MEMBERS:
"No!"] When I was at work at the bench, we used to pat the man on the back who produced a good day's work and did his work well. We used to think a lot of him. To-day, unfortunately, in the shops, the man who produces the smallest amount and does not get the sack is usually considered to be the best man. That is a bad thing for the country. We do not want slaves, but we want people to do fair dues. That is all we want—a fair amount of production for a fair day's wage.
The housing scheme of the late Government was broken up more from that point of view than anything else. There was the uneconomic state of affairs when authorities were told, "Never mind what you spend; we will make up everything to you with the exception of a penny rate." That was bribery and corruption of the local authorities. I happened to be at a meeting when a man got up, who called himself a Labour man, and said, "What does it matter what we spend? It will not come out of the rates at all. It will not make any difference to us "— that was the borough council in question —"the Government will have to pay." Let us get away from that idea. We do not want either workmen or employers to make unfair profits. They are entitled to a fair wage and a fair profit, and if the hon. Member would include private enterprise as well as local authorities, I believe there is something in the scheme that he has adumbrated for a better housing policy than we have had before. I hope the Government will take in hand something in this way, but if they exclude private enterprise it is bound to fail.

Mr. J. STEWART: I have listened to the remarks that have been made both by the hon. Member who spoke last and by the Noble Lord the Member for Hastings (Lord E. Percy), and am surprised that they have not supplied us with any idea whatever, as far as my intelligence can judge, as to how the problems can be solved. The hon. Member for North St. Pancras (Mr. Lorden) makes a charge against the workers that they accept wages which they have not really earned. When I was a boy I remember the same statement being made; but the hon. Member now says that when he worked in the shops the standard for the worker then was much higher than it is to-day. Both those statements cannot be true. At that time we were told that if the
worker would only work as the German worker worked, long hours for little pay, then this country would be on the road to progress. To-day we have been told, not about Germany, but about the United States. We are invited to watch how the worker there works. It is said that the reason why he is paid such high wages is because he produces more, but, as a matter of fact, the worker in America is being accused at the moment of exactly the same crime as is alleged against the worker here.
Housing is not a new question in this House; it is almost as old as the oldest Member who is sitting on these benches. I can remember, as a lad, being in London in 1882 or thereabouts, and then a popular stunt was being worked by all the leading newspapers of London, which vied with one another in painting lurid pictures of how the poor lived. At that time it became a pastime on the part of the people of Belgravia, "whose hearts are pure and fair," to go down to Whitechapel and other places and see how the poor lived. To-day, 40 years have elapsed, and all that we are doing is still talking about what seems to be as much an eternal problem as unemployment. These are questions, seemingly, which do not admit of solution. You have had control of the government of this country—both in the Government itself and in our rural councils—throughout the length and breadth of our land. In every place, almost without exception, where government is, you have controlled the affairs, both local and those of the State, with the disastrous result that every Member of the House deplores to-day.
There is no one who will not say that the present state of affairs ought not any longer to be allowed to exist, and yet nothing is to be done, because it costs money. Let me point out that so far as the cost in money is concerned it is, as has been already said, costing us a tremendous amount. In Scotland we have a problem that is much more intensified than it is in England. We have there a system of housing which it is almost impossible for those who have not lived under the conditions to conceive can exist in a civilised State. You talk about there being two people, on the average, living in each house; but, in the city where for the time being I happen to have the honour of representing a constituency, there are more than three
persons living under certain conditions in one room. We have 40,000 single apartments, with over 130,000 people occupying them—the population of a great city living in one-roomed houses with no conveniences of any kind whatever, living under the darkest and most dreary and dungeon-like conditions that can be conceived. The hon. and gallant Member for the Lanark Division of Lanarkshire (Captain Elliot) knows those conditions which obtain in our city.
Again, we have in Glasgow 112,000 room-and-kitchen houses, with a population of nearly 500,000 people. The second city of the Empire has over 60 per cent, of its people living either in single apartments or in two-roomed houses, many of them without even the family water-closet, and without the conveniences that hon. Members would consider to be absolutely necessary to even a modicum of decency. I see my hon. Friend the Member for Kelvingrove (Mr. Hutchison) here. In his district there are those conditions. Those conditions are such that it is impossible for us either to speak or to think with moderation about them. Little children are beginning life there and getting absolutely no chance, with the most disastrous results. I have sat as a Magistrate in the City of Glasgow, having to deal with the results of the housing conditions, to deal with the victims that those conditions have created, and I have had to pass sentence on them, while, if justice had been meted out to me and other members of the community, someone should have been sitting in judgment on us for permitting such conditions to exist.
In the City of Glasgow last year we spent nearly £800,000 on the health problem in order to deal with the bad conditions arising out of housing. A thousand people died from tuberculosis alone. They did not die in the well-to-do portions of the city. In one particular ward— Kelvinside—there was not a single case of tuberculosis; there was no death from tuberculosis in any of its forms; while in the constituency that I represent there were many deaths, and many continually contracting the disease. This year the Corporation of Glasgow is engaged in building a new sanatorium at a cost of over £300,000, to contain 200 or 300 beds. It has built a hospital which is now occupied by 440 patients. It has hundreds of cases in our Poor Law hospitals, all
arising from tuberculosis. Our fever hospitals are crowded. There is not a patient within any one of those hospitals who is not costing over £2 per week to maintain, allowing nothing whatever for the rent of the building. And the State comes along and says to us: "We will give you 50/50 if you build these buildings. We will supply you with the money, not on loan at a cheap rate of interest, but will give you the money absolutely to build these buildings." This problem has been dealt with in Scotland, and a Report was made in 1917 by a Commission appointed by this House in 1913, which stated that there were then required in Scotland 121,000 houses. That Commission was not at all representative of Labour; it was made up of medical men and business men; and its Report is more damning than anything I or anyone on these benches could say with regard to the housing conditions that obtain.
8.0 P.M.
Nothing, however, is being done. We are going on allowing the people to fester and rot, rearing and perpetuating a C3 population, while there is wealth and skill and ingenuity and enterprise enough to build up and make our country what every one of us, regardless of the bench on which we sit, desires in their innermost soul. We desire to see a healthy people develop, with intelligence, with a higher standard of morality than we dream of at the present moment. That is an ideal that can be realised, if only the idea is given over that we are here merely as agitators seeking for our own self-glorification. It is not so. We have been through it all. I am not speaking in a boastful spirit when I say I began life in a slum in Glasgow. My first dawnings of memory go back to a slum tenement. The memories of these things dwell within us, and if nature has gifted us with powers and given us voice to speak for our people who are dumb, if it gives us the intelligence and the desire to alter things, we must give expression to it. We are here desirous of doing our little bit to make our land a place fit for heroes to live in. where heroes may be bred and where the children who are growing up shall never know the terribly degrading conditions that exist for hundreds of thousands of my fellow citizens in Glasgow and throughout
the little country, but the great country as it is generally reckoned to be, of Scotland.

Sir SAMUEL CHAPMAN: As a new Member I desire to confine my remarks to one point only, and to be very brief. I listened with the greatest possible sympathy and with sincere interest to the very eloquent speech of the hon. Member for St. Rollox (Mr. J. Stewart). That is the spirit in which to deal with social questions of this kind, and, as one who was brought up at the feet of Lord Shaftesbury, I entirely agree with the sentiments which the hon. Member has expressed. I am not surprised to see so many hon. Members of extreme opinion returned for the great city of Glasgow. If I had to live in such houses, I doubt very much if I should be on those benches. [HON. MEMBERS: "Come over here!"] If these things cannot be altered, although I may not have many years to live, I may yet be over there. But it is because we on this side of the House are determined to face these social questions with resoluteness, that I am at present on this side of the House. I represent the best-housed population in Scotland, the South Division of Edinburgh, and I am quite sure from what I know of them that the electors there would like me, on the occasion of my maiden speech, to say that if that well-housed population can do anything to assist in getting better houses, we must throw our whole heart and soul into it and do whatever we can to support a resolute Government in doing a resolute action. The only point I presume to make is this. [HON. MEMBERS: "Go on!"] No, it is the proper thing for a new Member to be short. I only come from Edinburgh and must not imitate the great city of Glasgow. I have been downstairs and have dug out an Act of Parliament which was passed 23 years ago, at the instigation of a well-known social reformer, the late Mr. Joseph Chamberlain. It is called the Small Dwellings Acquisition Act. It was the idea of private enterprise, which has been mentioned opposite, which put me up to it, and I was working much on the same lines in my mind as the hon. Member for West Middlesbrough (Mr. T. Thomson), and I said, Cannot something be done to lead out that old Act of
Parliament, which has really, not been used to any extent? It is not a panacea, but it is a practical suggestion which I throw out to those who will have to deal with the housing question. Cannot we extend this Act and advance money on reasonable terms to private individuals, in order that they themselves may build houses? I inquired into this question nearly ten years ago for a particular purpose, and I found that the only city in the Kingdom which had used the Act was Dublin. [An HON. MEMBER: "It has been used in Wales."] Perhaps in Wales. I speak entirely without any recent knowledge. At any rate, Dublin took advantage of the Act, which gives local authorities the power to advance money to those who wish to buy their houses. I found that Dublin had been very active in this matter, I presume because they knew something of the Land Purchase Acts.
My suggestion is that we should encourage private enterprise. I was in Dundee on Saturday, and I found that houses were being built there of stone and lime, because we cannot build houses of brick in Scotland. They have five rooms and a kitchen, with necessary fences and roads, for £1,100, and smaller houses in proportion. Orders are being given today by private individuals for such houses, and the building trade is beginning again. I suggest that we should encourage further private enterprise, and if the Government could advance £450 for a house costing £500, and let the man pay the other £50, and let him have 12 or 14 years to pay it off with interest, and make it worth the while of the legal profession, charging the ordinary fees, to put such a scheme into operation, I believe you would find that all over the country there would be plenty of private people who would be willing to build houses on those terms. Plenty of money is still being subscribed for Savings Certificates. Why cannot we direct the people's savings into houses?

Mr. WHITELEY: I am very glad this discussion has brought observations from hon. Members opposite to the extent that it has. They now agree with us on this side as to the absolute need for dealing with the housing problem. It is one of the greatest national necessities that we have to face. Their solution is that it must be dealt with by private enterprise.
Our reply is that the present housing situation, with its abominable slums, is the creation of private enterprise, and private enterprise cannot get us out of the morass in which we are at present. This is a national need which has to be faced from a national point of view, and we believe, if the Government will see to it that national factories are set going for the making of bricks, doors, windows, and other necessary things for houses, and employ workmen at trade union rates for the building of houses, we shall soon overcome this difficulty. It was with us before the War, but the War has aggravated it. We had private enterprise before the War, and that did not settle it. That is why we have come to the very definite conclusion that we must have it dealt with on national lines. I come from the County of Durham, in which the medical officer of health reports that we have the worst housing conditions in the country. In a big industrial county like that, which has the third largest mining district in the whole of Great Britain, you will see the effect of bad housing on the physique of our people and on the health of our children. I have spent some time myself in dealing with the housing situation from the point of view of improving the health of our people, and reporting to the Minister of Health from time to time to see if we could not relieve the heavy sickness which is due to bad housing. At a practically new colliery in our county we have a large percentage of houses with only two rooms, with no through draught and with the old step ladder leading upstairs, and they are absolutely overcrowded. At one of our old collieries, the overcrowding which has been reported is extraordinarily serious. The sanitary conditions are in an awful state. We have at our largest colliery in the county some streets of houses containing no through draught, built on the one-storey system, the bedrooms overlooking the backyards of the others, and the overcrowding is exceedingly bad. In a good number of cases the people have beds in the pantries and no water, which has to be carried from the middle of the street. I am quite convinced that hon. Members opposite will agree with us that these conditions cannot be allowed to continue.
An hon. Member opposite said he rather expected we should deal with this in some two or three years' time. This
matter must be dealt with now. The need is a crying one and we cannot afford to wait two or three years in order to please hon. Members opposite. There is a case in the county of a house consisting of two rooms. The upstairs is let to another family. In the downstair room there are four persons, a man, his wife and two children. There is no through draught and the house is in a deplorable condition and is unfit for human habitation. The man is waiting to undergo an operation. He will certainly not improve until he has been removed from this house. That is a report I have as the result of inquiries into the health conditions of our people who are receiving sick benefit under the National Health Insurance scheme. May I remind the House of a previous King's Speech which contained this sentence,
The foundations of the national glory are set in the homes of the people.
If there be any national glory to be reflected from some of the housing conditions that have been revealed in speeches from this side of the House to-day, then I am sorry for the national glory. If there is to be any reflection of national glory it ought to be from the homes of the people. We have heard to-day from hon. Members, of men, women and children who go to sanatoria and who are built up there and made quite well again through the treatment they have received, and these people have had to come back to the very houses where they contracted the disease. We are wasting money in that way rather than in spending money in building decent homes. The same King's Speech contained the words:
All classes should work together in the reconstruction of this land, with goodwill for others.
That is exactly what we stand for on these benches. We are out to work with goodwill for others. Our people have not had an opportunity in past years, and we are seeking that they should have an opportunity, so that they may develop their life and enjoy their life more than they do in these days in order that they may give more to life than they have had an opportunity of giving hitherto. Our plea is that the Government should tackle this national question in a national way, in order that we may remedy this tremendous difficulty and become a healthier and happier race.

Viscountess ASTOR: I am feeling very encouraged about this House, because it is quite evident that it takes a deep interest in housing. Although the late Government took an interest in housing, I cannot say I think the people behind them took a very great interest in it. Housing is one of the fundamental things of the country, and I should like to tell hon. Members opposite that not all the Members who sit on those benches are here to protect their interests. You do not need to be born in a slum to have a heart. There is no woman, certainly no mother, who knows of the conditions under which children are born and bred but who must be keen about housing schemes. If hon. Members on the opposite side of the House will use their heads as much as their hearts, and if hon. Members who sit on this side will use their hearts as well as their heads, I think we can get on very well. You must have a combination of head and heart. [Interruption.] I do not want interruptions from the other side, because I am pretty glib with my tongue, and I would rather get along without them.
The Noble Lord the Member for Hastings (Lord E. Percy) has made a real contribution to the discussion to-day. Some hon. Members on the other side said that they did not understand what he was talking about. The Noble Lord said everything that I wanted to say, only I could not have said it in such a way. The Government has to face the question of slum clearances. It is absolutely essential that that should be done, and if hon. Members opposite will press for that, it will be all to the good. I hope they will look forward and not backward. One of the tragedies of the world is that people are always looking backward and raking up somebody's horrible past. We know perfectly well that if the ordinary man had been as interested in his home as in drink we should have had better housing to-day. I admit that the home has driven many a man to drink. I put the two together. [An HON MEMBER: "We are teetotallers in Scotland, and we are not responsible for the housing conditions!"] I am not surprised that there are teetotallers coming from Glasgow. We all know that these two things, drink and bad housing, go together.
I ask hon. Members to realise that this is not a Socialistic Government. [HON. MEMBERS: "We know it!"] Well then,
face facts. Go and persuade the country that you are right, and you will get a Socialist Government. [HON. MEMBERS: "We shall!"] I think you are a long way from Tipperary yet. I want you to be practical. It is no good trying to impose Socialistic schemes on this Government, because you will not get them through. If housing reformers on that side of the House will combine with housing reformers on this side to press the Government to go as far as it can we may make progress. Let us work together, instead of hon. Members on the other side shaking their r's at hon. Members every time housing questions come up. [HON. MEMBERS: "Roll your r's"] I can hardly speak English since some of you come here from Scotland. I beg of you to realise that this Government is not going in for socialistic schemes, and I ask you to help us. The hon. Member for South Edinburgh (Sir S. Chapman) looks at this matter as I do. If we cannot get real housing reform and get the Government to take a deep interest in social reform we may not be here long ourselves.
I ask hon. Members opposite to realise that there are hundreds of men and women in the Unionist party who are just as earnest and just as courageous in regard to housing as they are, and these people were not; born in the slums. They feel as keen about it as hon. Members opposite. I hope the Government will be pressed on reasonable lines. What one hon. Member said about the children is perfectly true. I am looking forward to a sort of spiritual revival in the country, and I know that many men and women are ready for that revival, but how on earth can you preach to people living in the conditions under which they have to live? We know that it is absolutely impossible. I hope that, no matter how much the Government may have to economise in other things, they will allow nothing to stop them from progressive housing reform. I am all for private enterprise. [HON. MEMBERS: "Oh!"] Yes, it is generally the economic failures who are against it. [HON. MEMBERS: "We are not economic failures! "] I do not blame you, but you have to persuade the country, and I do wish you would take a more persuasive
tone with us. If I wanted to get you on my side, I would not hit you in the eye two or three times.

Mr. NEIL MACLEAN: That is what you are doing.

Viscountess ASTOR: Never, and nobody knows that better than you do. I beg every section of the House to urge the Government as much as they can to deal with this question of housing. I warn the Government that there are desperate people who are social reformers in their own party, and we cannot back a reactionary Government any more than we can back a Bolshevist Government.

Mr. MARCH: What we have heard in connection with housing from the other side is very encouraging. We recognise that they appreciate the necessity for housing as well as we do. We have heard from the Noble Lord the Member for Hastings (Lord E. Percy) something about waving flags and beating drums. I hope this is not a question of waving flags and beating drums, nor yet beating the air. What we stand for are fundamental facts. We want the Government to understand that we are surprised and disappointed that they have not mentioned something about housing in the King's Speech. Everyone recognises the necessity there is for housing, and surely that ought to be one of the first things that the Government should have tackled. We should have got down to the bedrock bottom in regard to housing. It is little use of me to speak of the difficulties which prevail with regard to slum areas in places like Bow and Bromley and Poplar, where I live. We have had slums, as the hon. Member for Bow and Bromley (Mr. Lans-bury) has said, scheduled for the last 20 years, but they have never been cleared. We want them cleared away, but it is very difficult for anybody, however good-intentioned they may be, to begin to clear away these slums until they build some new houses in which to put the people. That has been our great difficulty, not only in Poplar, but in other parts of the East and South-East of London. Where there is land to build new houses, it is a shame and disgrace to this Government and the last Government to have stopped the housing when the land is already purchased for the purpose of building these houses.
My hon. Friend the Member for Bo-wand Bromley said that we fought and worked hard with the Noble Lord the Member for Hastings to get our people to invest their money in the Housing Bonds. I went stumping along with the Noble Lord asking the people to invest their money. We knew that we could not build very many houses in Poplar, but we did recognise that there was land a little way out where buildings could go up which would enable us to clear out overcrowding and slums in our own district. Overcrowding is worse in Poplar than in the cases referred to by my hon. Friend the Member for St. Rollax (Mr. J. Stewart), who spoke of three and four in one room. I could quote case after case in our own district of six children, a mother and father in one room, with a boy and girl the oldest of the family from 16 to 17 years of age, and all living and sleeping in one room, and it is continually the case of one of the children at least being ill in that same room. And I could tell of a ease of one of the children dying in one of these rooms, and having to be taken out to a shed, where a watch had to be kept to prevent the rats from gnawing the dead child's body before the funeral. Is that the kind of thing to encourage the British race or the British Empire?
We are not going to allow that kind of thing to continue any longer than we can possibly help. We hope to get, not merely the sympathy, but the support of people on the other side who are desirous of bringing these reforms about. I was pleased to hear the hon. Member for North St. Pancras (Mr. Lorden) say that 300,000 houses would immediately solve the problem. Yes, immediately. That is what they said in 1918 and 1919. We were going to have 500,000 houses immediately, and we have not built 200,000 houses yet. Now we have come down to 300,000. We shall be glad on these benches to see a start made to build even 300,000 houses immediately to house the people, and give them a chance of living such as they have never had up to the present. I want to re-echo what was said by the hon. Member for St. Rollox. We, who have been brought up amid these conditions in the slums, shall never forget them, and will never forgive those men who have forced us to live in those places. We are going to do our best to
change it, and I trust that we shall have united effort from all to change these things as speedily as possible.

Mr. W. HUTCHISON: If this is the first time that I have intervened in this Debate, it is not through lack of interest in the subject that is under discussion, because I am one of the representatives of the City of Glasgow, which contains some of the worst slums that could be imagined, and from that point of view the people in my division believe sincerely in the necessity for houses. The hon. Member for St, Rollox (Mr. J. Stewart) drew no exaggerated picture so far as Glasgow is concerned. If I could let hon. Members of this House see the awful conditions which exist in that city, they would see that the matter can brook no delay, and it shall be my endeavour as long as I am on these benches to urge the Government, of which I am a humble supporter, to do everything possible to solve this housing problem, especially in the country to which I belong. The housing question has been neglected for this reason, that instead of the Government taking on the job the Government said to the municipalities, "You must solve the housing problem," and the municipalities said that it must be solved "by the Government. Between those two we have been put off so far as Scotland is concerned. I recognise the sincerity of my hon. Friends on the other side of the House, and I hope that we shall have their hearty co-operation with the Government rather than their criticism. This Government has only been in existence one short week and to ask them to produce at once a solution of the housing problem which, as the hon. Member opposite said, has engaged attention for 40 years, is to ask them to do something which is beyond human power. But I am sure that we will all work together to endeavour to get the Government to do everything possible to deal with this problem and improve the conditions of the people which are so deplorable.

Mr. PALING: As a new Member, naturally I feel some hesitation in addressing this House, but the circumstances around where I live are such in regard to housing that I feel bound to make some contribution to the Debate. I live in a district where new mines have been opened out during the last 10 years, within a radius of 10 or 15 miles, bringing
to the district every year many thousands of working men. During the four years of War, and the four years since, only a very small number of houses have been built, though within the last 10 years these scores of thousands of working men have been coming into this district, and this makes the problem probably more acute than in many other parts of the country. The last census figures show that in the urban area where I live our population Increased 107 per cent. as compared with the previous figures. This will give some idea of the number of people who are coming into our district to live. This makes the housing problem in Doncaster and district extremely acute. We started just over three years ago as an urban council to build houses. We were prepared to give the Housing Act the fullest possible support. We had 400 applicants for houses at the time. We have built 300 houses, which is the utmost number that the Government would allow us to build, and in spite of these 300 we have at present 800 applicants upon our lists. We are getting worse and worse every week and every month.
We have had also during the last month or so a visitation of small-pox. Our medical officer of health, because of the alarming overcrowding, not only in the old houses, but in the new, told the Council that if they did not take steps to have this overcrowding abolished he would not be responsible for what might happen. We tried to take steps. We got a census of the number of people living in the houses, and it alarmed every member of the council. We gave instructions to our officials that in some of the worst cases they must ask these people to find fresh lodgings. In three weeks' time we had had such a number of pitiable cases brought to us from the people who had been asked to clear out that the council had to go back on their word. It was an utter impossibility for these people to find any other place in which to live. The Noble Lord the Member for Hastings (Lord E. Percy) referred to the fact that because of the congestion of business the authorities had not been able to carry out the Housing Act as they ought to have done. I do not know how far that may be true with some authorities. I have in my mind a neighbouring authority, which I think never intended to carry out the Housing Act. They did not agree with the building of houses by
municipalities and they built as little as possible. I know other authorities in the neighbourhood which did agree with municipal building and tried to put the Act into operation to the fullest possible extent.
We built 300 houses. At the time we wanted 1,100. To-day we want 2,000 houses. But we have still only 300. The only advance we have made on the 300 have been 18 houses about six months ago and 26 houses about a month ago, after we came down to the Ministry of Health as a special deputation. In order to secure the 26 we got six subsidised houses from the Ministry on condition that we built 20 ourselves. Fortunately we happened to be in the position of having some land given to us, with the streets and everything made, with officials whose heart was in the business, who did their best to get in tenders at a price which we could afford to pay. We received tenders at £310 per house, and we found it possible to build 20 houses which could be let at something like an economic rent. When we came as a deputation to London the people at the Ministry of Health could hardly believe that we had got such low tenders with such specifications as we submitted, and they candidly complimented us on the fact that they were the best things they had had up to that moment.
I hope that this Government is going to realise the urgency of the housing question. It has been suggested by one speaker that comparisons ought to be made between some of the houses being built and some that are already built. I do not know his district, but I invite him to come to my district and to compare the houses we have built with the houses that are being built by private enterprise. We are not far from such places as Conis-borough, Denaby, Cadeby and Sheffield. We have terrible slums in Doncaster. I could take hon. Members to my own authority's area, where houses have been built within the last 12 years by private enterprise. Any hon. Member can compare those houses with the houses built by the local authority. It has been said that there is a scramble for houses built by the municipalities. Certainly. There is a scramble in my district, where everyone who can get out of a private enterprise house into a local authority house
tries to do so, because the local authority house is so much better.
Is it intended that if we get back to private enterprise we are to get back to such houses as have been constructed in the past—rows upon rows of monotonous dwellings, hundreds in a row instead of the semi-detached houses which we build, houses with hardly any amenities for the housewife who spends so much of her time in them? Compared with the local authority houses they are 50 years behind the times. We have found it possible to build houses of a decent character, and I hope that the Government, so far from repressing local authorities, will give them every facility to go on building. We have found that local authorities can build better than and as cheaply as private enterprise, and can give more attention to the amenities, and even to the look of the houses, to the aesthetic side. We hope that the Government will take these facts into consideration and will help local authorities to build as many houses as possible. We have found that when a possible tenant has the choice between a municipal house and the house of a private landlord, in 999 cases out of 1,000 he will plump for the municipal house. I appeal to the Government to consider the extreme urgency of the question and to allow us to get houses built in the immediate future.

Mr. CHARLES ROBERTS: The Government can hardly fail to be impressed with the character of this Debate. It has sprung up spontaneously, but immediately there has come a demand from all sections of the House that the Government should take the question into its earliest consideration and press it forward urgently. In no part of the House has there been any disposition to overlook the scandal of the housing conditions in town and in rural districts alike. I shall not labour that point. We all know that the conditions are intolerable and that they ought to have been remedied long ago. I think the Government is bound to do something to remedy the pitiable failure of its predecessor, though for that failure the members of the present Government, as individuals, are largely responsible. I express my regret, and I even tender my sympathy, to the Government that they have not a Minister of Health or anyone represent-
ing the Ministry of Health here to express to the House the preliminary intentions which the Government may have formed. The failure of the Government housing scheme has been of an educational character. It has made some of us extremely sceptical about the possibilities of State action, for, when all is said and done, that scheme was undoubtedly pressed forward with sincerity, it was in the hands of a Minister who realised the urgency of the problem, who had his heart in the work and was doing his best to make the scheme a success. It was pressed forward in pursuance of electoral pledges of the most urgent character, and the disillusion about housing is one of the reasons why electoral promises to-day have depreciated to such an extent.
What did State action produce? It has produced up to date one-fifth of the houses we admittedly required. Each one of those houses on the average cost £1,150. Each of them entailed upon the taxpayer an annual loss of £55 and an eventual liability on the nation in the next 6C years which will run up to £600,000,000. You may say if you like that the Government ought to have controlled the cost of building material. There was a scheme for dealing with building materials—I am not acquainted with all the circumstances of it—but undoubtedly the Government did control building materials. Private individuals found it exceedingly difficult, and in some cases impossible, to get them, and yet on their building materials scheme the Government succeeded, with that fatality which dogs all State action, in making a loss of some £72,000. How they succeeded in doing that fairly beats me, but a study of the reports of the Auditor-General seems to show that wherever the Government interferes with trade or commerce, it does not matter what Department is involved or what action is taken, we generally find a loss at the end of the transaction I do not know what the explanation of that may be. These transactions, after all, are carried out, not by party politicians, but by civil servants, by men who are trying to make a success of their jobs, and it is no explanation to say that persons inspired by a different theory of the State would succeed better. I believe there are limitations to State action. At all events,
the Government scheme broke down in abject and pitiable fashion, and therefore it is incumbent upon the new Government, at the earliest possible moment, to bring forward a practicable scheme which will avoid the faults of their predecessors and will do something to remedy the present state of affairs.
I am not going to say that this matter can be left merely to private enterprise. I agree that you must have State action or municipal action to clear away slums. You cannot leave that to private enterprise. There is no possible return in cash on that. There will be a return to the nation, but that return must be estimated in the improved health and the better chances of the people when they are living in better houses. You will not get a money dividend by the clearing away of the slums, but there again, State action is surely limited at the present time, because unless you can get houses built and unless you can satisfy the demand for the houses, it is no use clearing away the slums. Indeed you cannot do so. You cannot turn people out of bad houses merely because they are bad if there is no other place for them to go to. Therefore there must be some beginnings with an improved supply of houses before the State or the municipalities can really begin to clear away the slums. The two things must go hand in hand. From what the Prime Minister said, I imagine the Government is not going in for any large State scheme. I hope at least they will have a practical scheme for encouraging private enterprise. I want to see all agencies engaged in this work. Let us have the local authorities acting where they think they can act. I would give them a free hand, but I do not think they ought to have a monopoly. I think all agencies should be called in to help— public utility societies, building societies and private individuals. This is a problem which should be tackled on all sides and by all agencies. Private enterprise has been sneered at in some quarters. [An HON. MEMBER: "It is responsible for the present conditions."] Not entirely. After all, the cessation of building during the War has largely aggravated the difficulty, which was bad before the War. Certainly private enterprise before the War was supplying a large part, though I will not say the whole, of the housing needs of the country. I do not think it
is true to say that the building societies and the co-operative societies, which were building fairly good houses up and down the country, were only creating slums. I do not think that is true in the least. [Interruption.] I think hon. Members know perfectly well what the circumstances were, and where they can obtain statistics relating to them.
I am quite certain there was a great deal of building going on, in the towns at all events, if not in the country, and I think it is not beyond the powers of the Government, while leaving the municipalities a free hand, while calling upon them and expecting them to clear away slums, at the same time to encourage private enterprise. They can give cheap loans and advance at cheap rates to public utility societies and to building societies. If they do that they may have to require a limit on the rates. I also think the Chancellor of the Exchequer might do a great deal if he would lighten the burden of taxation on housing. These two points might do a great deal to solve the housing problem in the country districts. We have heard a great deal about housing in towns to-night. There is also a real problem in the country districts and encouragement along the lines I have indicated would, I believe, enable the problem to be dealt with at all events in the country districts if not in the towns. The thing which is in my mind is this. The State wishes to encourage life insurance, it wishes to encourage thrift, and it does not tax the money which is devoted to life insurance. The State wants houses at the present moment—the need is urgent—but a good deal of the difficulty has been caused by the added burden of taxation, and if that burden were lightened along lines which are well understood, I believe that that would do a good deal to stimulate the private individuals and the public utility societies to grapple with the problem. I agree, of course, that if you do that, you have got to limit rents, and to give those advantages only to houses at a limited rental, but provided that is done I think a good deal of encouragement could be given along those lines.
I do not wish to drag in a question which is not immediately connected, but let us remember, when we are talking about the slums, that you will not wholly solve this problem unless you at the same time deal with the question referred to by I the hon. Member for the Sutton Division
of Plymouth (Viscountess Astor), because so long as you have the influence of the drink traffic in this country to the extent to which you have, you have an agency which makes for the manufacture of slums. Even though the State or private enterprise may provide perfectly good houses, we know quite well that there are cases in which good houses are degraded into slums by influences which we all deplore. I am not making any attack on one class or another. We all know that it is an evil which pervades all classes. I am dealing with the problem of housing, and I think that these questions of drink and housing are just interconnected. They act and inter-act. Bad housing makes drinking, and drinking, makes bad housing, and I wish there were some possible chance of the Government, in view of the need for better housing and to safeguard the homes of the people, dealing with that problem, while not neglecting the other. I join with all my heart in pressing upon the Government that this matter cannot be neglected. I think there is a unanimous demand. We may differ in the ways by which we hope the problem will be solved, but we are all united in feeling that it is a matter of immense social urgency, and we cannot press it too hard upon the attention of the Government in the hope that they will take the very earliest opportunity of dealing with it.

9.0 P.M.

Mr. WARNE: I am sure the House is impressed by the urgent need there is in this country of ours for more houses, but while we are discussing here our different methods of how these houses shall be provided, I do not want us to forget the intolerable suffering that is being imposed upon a million of men, women and children in this country through the shortage of houses. The Government of 1918 told us—and it was quite a modest estimate—that we needed 500,000 houses. The hon. Member for West Middlesbrough (Mr. T. Thomson) told us to-night that in the last three years there have been a million marriages in this country. That should at once give us some conception of the immensity of the problem that confronts us at -the present time. I may be allowed to tell the House exactly what has come to me to-day from the constituency which I represent in the County of Northumberland. Owing to the shortage of houses in one of the mining districts there, there has been a coroner's inquest
upon the body of a man who was found dead in a cave on the seashore. The coroner expressed very strong opinions about the case and said it was one of the worst in his memory. The police inspector mentioned that there were many other families living under the same conditions because they could not get houses. The Coroner asked him if he meant that this man was living in this state for six weeks, and the inspector again put in that evidence, that that was the reason why the man was dead. The Coroner then said that, to his mind, many thousands of people were living like wild beasts in this country.
I am told that this House of Commons, from the point of view of housing, is a better House of Commons than that which was here prior to the General Election. I am told that 100 Members on the other side have committed themselves by expressing themselves as favourable to a bold housing policy being carried out at the earliest possible moment by the Government. If they, along with the hon. Members in the other two sections in this House, bring that desire to bear upon the Government, one can hope that in a very few months we shall be seeing something on the way to meet the terrible need for houses in this country at the present time. We have been told often since we met in this House that people should not live in the past, but I am afraid that the people who are continually shouting "Private enterprise" are the people who live only in the past. There are things in this country facing us to-day that can be solved only by collective effort—private enterprise cannot solve them—and housing is one of them. Why should this halt in housing be called at the present time? I say this, that the only praiseworthy achievement that the last Government can point to is the houses they have erected for the people of this country. They have nothing else to show for the millions of pounds of the taxpayers' money which they have squandered in other directions. The only thing they can look to is these homes that they have provided for the people of this country, and in the face of all the slander and all the jeers that have been levelled against the houses provided by the local authorities, as chairman of a housing committee, as one whose life during the last three years has been occupied in trying to get houses for the people, I
want to say that in she houses that we have erected under the Government schemes we are 100 years in advance of any thing that was provided by private enterprise. In those difficult times we had to build houses costing £1,000,and now we can build the same houses for £350. With all the advances we have made, with all the amenities that we are providing, as the hon. Member for Doneaster (Mr. Paling) expressed, with all the conveniences, with all the open spaces and gardens that are attached to the houses under our schemes, is there any hon. Member in this House anxious to do the best for the future generations of this country of ours who wants us to go back again to private enterprise, which, if they have it in their hands, would be outside the local authorities' direction, unless they have already got their housing and town planning schemes? Are we going back to the miserable effort and the miserable accomplishment that stands in our country to-day as the strongest condemnation of that glorious system of which hon. Members opposite always boast? I happened to be a miner before I was elected to this House, having been born and brought up in one of the ugly mining districts in which we have to be brought up, like being dragged through Hell to see if you have any virtues left in you. We are wonderful, taking into account the circumstances and conditions. I want to put in an appeal, on behalf of the mining communities in these ugly mining villages, for a collective national effort to provide houses in place of the present boxes, and to use the resources of this country for the purpose. Do not let us live in the past. Let us look to the future, and, looking to the future, we have got to have new ideas and new conceptions of how problems have to be tackled. It is because of that that I want to make this small contribution to the Debate, to see if I can help on the solution of this very vital point.

Mr. WHEATLEY: It is very pleasing to hear the expressions of sympathy and the heartfelt desires of Members in various parts of this House, and if sympathy would build houses, or if fancy phrases would solve our problems, then we would have no social difficulties at all. But when we get down to tackle the housing problem we find that we cannot solve it with sympathy or with phrases,
that it is a hard business, and that right at the root of it there is the question of economics. When we come to do the actual work of erecting houses we have to choose between rival sets of principles, of which the two sides here are the public representatives. We have been advised by Members on the other side to be very choice in our language, and then perhaps some day we may convert them. We are not foolish; we never expect to convert Members on the other side. We are addressing our remarks over their heads to the people who have sent them here. We are asking those people to remember that if representation by Liberals or by Tories had been a solution for the social problems of Great Britain we would not to-day have any social problems at all.
I want to direct my remarks to the practical difficulties in the way of solving the housing problem, in order to show that no sympathy from the other side, and indeed no sympathy from any quarter, can be any substantial contribution. My hon. Friend the Member for St. Rollox (Mr. J. Stewart) gave a picture of the housing conditions in the city which here presents, a picture which was accepted in its entirety, and, indeed, described as one of moderation by the hon. Member for the Kelvin Grove Division of Glasgow (Mr. W. Hutchison). We have made various efforts in the. City of Glasgow to alter the conditions described by my hon. Friend. Like the other local authorities, we were invited by the late Government in 1919 to prepare for them a report of houses that were necessary in our city, and we did so through our responsible officials— not members of the Labour party, not Socialists or extremists. I would like to remind Members on the other side that we are not extremists at all. As a matter of fact, to get to this House I had to defeat an extremist in the City of Glasgow. I am one of the moderate representatives. We moderate people and we practical people in the City of Glasgow set about, under the direction of the Government, to remove those conditions which appear to be universally deplored in this House, and we made our returns to the late Government to the effect that we required immediately 57,000 new houses, with an additional 5,000 per annum to meet the natural decay of property, and the natural expansion of the
population. We thought, like many other people, in our innocence, that the Government were in earnest.
We have learned since, on the very best authority, that the Government never intended us to get houses. There is at the head of the Local Government Board in Scotland, which, by the way, is the authority in Scotland responsible for the carrying out of the Government housing policy, a gentleman named Sir George McCrae. He will be known by reputation at least to many Members of this House. He is an honoured member of the Liberal party, one of its distinguished lights, one of those lovers of freedom, those men who want to raise us—by private enterprise of course, and at a substantial profit—to a higher plane. He opposed, in the recent, election, one of my colleagues on these benches. Sir George McCrae, as I said, was responsible for carrying out the housing policy. He has not the political astuteness of many people, and he therefore opens his mouth sometimes and discloses things that were never intended to be revealed. He made a speech in London, the date of which I can only give from memory, but it was reported, I believe, in the "Daily News" in June, 1920. In that speech he declared that it was never the intention of the Government to carry out that housing policy. He said in effect: Remember the times we were living in. Revolution was stalking over the land, and if we could lay the spectre of revolution by a few promises which were intended to be broken, surely we performed a national service. Sir George McCrae was only stating publicly, and in his political innocence, what was in the hearts of all the supporters of the late Government. [HON. MEMBERS: "No!" and "Hear, hear!"] It is not surprising that, acting under the auspices of a Government imbued with a dishonest spirit like that Government was, very little should be done in the way of providing houses.
As I have said, we require that enormous number of houses immediately. We have only succeeded in having erected in that city 1,500 new houses, and we have in the course of erection an additional 2,500. The reason for that was, in the main, the difficulties put in our w ay by the people who did not want those houses provided. When in the city
council we prepared plans and sent them to the Government, we had almost incredible delays in having those plans passed. Objection would be taken to oriel windows, to the class of nails we were using; we were to have certain classes of timber, and those plans were again and again returned to the corporation, and months and months were lost that might have been used in the provision of houses. But then it was not only the delays for which the Government themselves were responsible and the difficulties they put in the way. It was the failure of the Government to remove the very serious difficulties that the principles of society of which hon. and right hon. Gentlemen opposite are the defenders put in the way of the provision of houses.
We require three main things in the provision of houses. We require land. We heard a great deal during the War as to this land of ours. We heard it was a land worth defending. Our men went from Glasgow and other places to defend it. They came back. Having won the battle they thought they had won the prize. They found—some of them, perhaps, to their astonishment—that, although they had saved the land from the Germans, the land had not become theirs; that it still belonged to someone else. In the division which I represent, the East End of the City, we had an excellent example of how private enterprise works, that sacred principle which you must not touch with a forty-foot pole and how it affects the erection of houses. We required to erect temporary houses, huts that is, for the men who had returned from the front. There was in my neighbourhood a piece of land about ten acres in extent owned by a man known as Lord Newlands. That land had stood in the valuation roll of the city for 40 years as having no value. That was the return made by Lord Newlands when that return was wanted for rating purposes. We thought there would be no difficulty at all about inducing Lord Newlands, who, I understand, is one of the very best specimens of landlordism—not the worst— whose private ownership of the whole area had been saved by the sacrifices of the men who now wanted housing accommodation—to put this waste land at the disposal of the local authorities. We counted without our private enterpriser! Immediately we wanted the land, Lord Newlands said: "You can have it on con
dition that you pay me £714 per acre." We had to pay it. Then we only got a sort of backward portion of it. When we wanted a front portion facing the main street, Lord Newlands wanted for that £2,500 an acre, and we had that blessed Government of ours —I refer to 1915–that was so anxious to provide homes for heroes; we had that Government defending, not the ex-service men who required the huts, but Lord Newlands, who wanted to profiteer out of the waste land.
After having lost months and months again in negotiating for the purchase of the land and surmounting the difficulties put in our way by Sir George McCrae—I have no doubt, suggested by that blessed Government—having surmounted these, we got down to the question of building materials. Here again, we came up against the question of private ownership and private enterprise. You say we must get houses. Of course we must. "Our people must have healthier conditions, our little children must have opportunity to blossom forth, as we are a great people "—and all that nonsense, because when it comes to practical politics, it is only nonsense that we hear from the other side of the House. [HON. MEMBERS: "Oh, oh!" and "What about the Labour party?"] We wanted materials. We found that private enterprise existed not only in land but almost in perfection in the control of building materials. Hon. Members on the other side deplore anything in the nature of Government control. But they have no objection at all to control if it is trust control. They say that wages would have to be controlled under the system of control that we are advocating, as if wages were not controlled to-day! This is not a question of whether you are to have control. It is a question of who is to control. Whether you are to have control of the many by the few or of the few by the many. That is the question. When we got to the question of materials, we found that almost every possible thing required in the construction of houses was controlled by a trust or a combine. I have in my hand, placed there by one of my colleagues, a Report made by a Government Committee—and I believe the hon. Member who spoke from the other side was a member—a Report of a Profiteering Committee issued in May, 1919, to the Government. It shows
that trusts existed in tiles, chimney-pots, earthenware, lead pipes, iron castings, wall-paper, glass, cement, boilers, and nearly everything required for the erection of a house. Here was control, not Government control, but control by private enterprise, control by a state of society that you say we must defend. Why did that control exist? For the express purpose of exploiting the national need for private profit.

Colonel Sir A. H0LBROOK: It was Government control of building material, not that of private individuals.

Mr. WHEATLEY: When an hon. Member gets up on the other side and states that a Report, dealing with building materials, is other than it is—a Report made to the Government showing how the resources of the nation had got into the hands of rings and profiteers—when he does not know that, then there is no sense at all left in the appeal made to us to try to convert the other side. I have had considerable experience of the operation of these building trusts. I know that one of them, called the Light Castings Association—I am speaking on the authority of one of its prominent members—was able within 18 months of its inception to increase the price of that particular material by over 60 per cent. We found for years in the City of Glasgow that we could not get competitive offers for the glazing required to be done by the corporation. We could invite any number, of firms to offer, and they would offer, but when we opened the tenders, by a wonderful coincidence, by a remarkable operation of glorious private enterprise, the offers to the corporation did not vary by a single penny. We are told that private enterprise has been impeded in the erection of houses by Governmental control. There was very little Government control at all on materials. What actually existed under Government policy was this. The Government established a Department called the Department of Building Material Supplies. That Department fixed a maximum price for building material, but it fixed it only for local authorities. Mark the difference. It did not fix it for private builders at all. It did not fix it for anything outside the erection of dwelling-houses. Reference has been made to the increase that took place in the price of bricks. If local authorities were paying 80s.for
bricks, and the private enterpriser wanted to erect a cinema, he only required to offer 85s. a thousand for the bricks and the Government would let him have them. The result was that all over the West of Scotland we had picture-houses erected at almost every street corner, while people were dying in the slums for lack of adequate housing accomodation, and the Government, which pretended—

Lord E. PERCY: Why did not your local authorities stop it, if they had power to do so?

Mr. WHEATLEY: That is a very pertinent question. The Noble Lord is quite right. In the City of Glasgow the local authority attempted to stop it. They appointed a committee, which had every case brought before it and, to the credit of the city, Moderate and Labour members alike opposed the granting of permission for the erection of these cinemas. [HON. MEMBERS: "Hear, hear!"] Ah! But the Government had left a loophole. The Government never acts without leaving a way of escape for its friends. The Government, as the Noble Lord knows, in its policy, and in that particular Act, had provided a right of appeal by the private enterpriser to an outside body of which, in Glasgow, Sheriff Fyfe was the Chairman. That appeal court, in every single case, overturned the decision of the local authority. If the Government had been in earnest they would not have given any right of appeal to a private enterpriser on the question of whether or not houses, cinemas, or public houses, were to be erected. They would have laid it down that until the people possessed adequate housing accommodation, they could do with the number of picture-houses they then possessed.
The result of all that was this. We had actually to bring bricks from London to Glasgow to erect our Government houses. We had to get bricks from the London Brick Company, which cost us 105s. per thousand for transport from London to Glasgow. The bricks. were actually costing us more to carry from the brickworks to the building site than they were costing us at the brickworks when we went to purchase them. That all took place under the late Government. That was not the only difficulty. Reference has been made by an hon. Member, I believe on this side
of the House, to the way in which the housing problem could be solved by reducing the rates a little. He suggested that if we could only reduce the rates a little the whole thing would disappear. What do we find in regard to that?

Mr. C. ROBERTS: If the hon. Member is referring to me, that was not what I said.

Mr. WHEATLEY: There was so little in what the hon. Member said that I do not know if he said that. I want to point to another side to this question and to show how this operates in regard to the financial gang, the private enterprisers in finance, whom the Government and their representatives, with all their sentiments and their sympathies, are sent here to defend. In 1913, a house similar to those under the Government scheme could have been erected in Glasgow for £200. We had estimates for such houses at £200 each in 1913. In that year we could borrow the money at 3 per cent. That meant that in 1913 the financiers were getting £6 per annum in interest out of the houses erected in the City of Glasgow. In 1920, through the operation of private enterprise, the price had gone up to £1,100. Not only so, but the rate of interest had gone up from 3 per cent, to 6 per cent. That meant that, whereas in 1913 each house had to contribute £6 per annum in interest, in 1920 each house was expected to contribute £66 per annum in interest. It was compelled to contribute 11 times more in 1920 than it had to contribute in 1913. Hon. Members will see how successful private enterprise is! Private enterprise can put up the value of an investment by 11 time in about five years. [An HON. MEMBER: "What about 1913? Was it not successful then?"] Yes, it was doing very well in 1913, but in the interval we had a War. The boys had gone to the front, they had given their lives, they had shed their blood, and in many cases lost their limbs.

Captain ARTHUR EVANS: Also the boys on the other side.

Viscountess ASTOR: And on our side, too.

Mr. WHEATLEY: As the result of the War, these people were able, between 1913 and 1920, in seven years, to work out their levy. Hon. Members talk about
a levy on capital being an injurious thing. Do they not see that the levy on the dwelling houses of the people has been increased 11 times between 1913 and 1920? We have been told, in the course of this discussion, that, of course, prices have come down. As I said the other night, private enterprise claims a great deal of credit for the fact that, by stopping the building of houses, the cost of erecting houses has been brought down until it is now only £400 per house. Let me remind hon. Members again that we have not got the houses. There is nothing very clever about it. You could bring down the price of clothes by an application of the same principle. The principle is merely this. You issue an Order in Council prohibiting people from getting clothes for the next IS months, and if you forced them to go naked for a year no doubt clothes would be cheaper at the end of that year. You have said to the people, "The only thing that can be done within the limits of the principles, of which we are defenders, is that you cannot get any houses at all." When it comes to the clearing of slums, private enterprise does not come in there. There is no profit there. You must not set the vile hand of nationalisation or socialisation to anything when there is a profit.

Lord E. PERCY: Do you make a profit on housing?

Mr. WHEATLEY: If there is no profit in a thing, then the State may have it. For instance, you do not want private enterprise in the Navy. No, it is "our" Navy, but "your" railways, "your" mines, "your" land, and "our" National Debt. I have never heard a single syllable from hon. Gentlemen on the other side of the House opposing the nationalisation of Debt. When you come to the question of slums, it merely amounts to this, that you want private enterprise to go on making profit out of the needs of the people. Then, in the very necessity of its operation, it produces a certain number of slums, and you wish the local authorities, representing the ratepayers, to come in as the cleansing department of the capitalist system in regard to houses and to wipe out the slums which you have created, and upon which you have made a profit. We are not going to do anything of the kind.

Lord E. PERCY: You are going to do nothing.

Mr. WHEATLEY: The Noble Lord says we are going to do nothing. I would remind him that this is not the side of tranquillity.

Lord E. PERCY: What is your policy?

Mr. WHEATLEY: The Prime Minister made an appeal for a majority, and the basis of his appeal was that if he were returned to power he would do nothing. The Noble Lord is here as a supporter of the party which wants to do nothing.

Lord E. PERCY: What are you going to do?

Sir C. KINLOCH-COOKE: On a point of Order. I would like to ask if an hon. Member is in order in interjecting remarks and interrupting while standing below the Bar.

Mr. DEPUTY-SPEAKER (Mr. James Hope): It is not in order for an hon. Member to interrupt, when standing below the Bar.

Mr. WHEATLEY: I think it is quite reasonable that hon. Members opposite should ask what we would do if we stood in their place. We would do something. We do not agree with what has been said by some Members on the Liberal Benches who do not differ fundamentally one iota from hon. Gentlemen opposite. At any rate, we would do something very different. We are a growing force in the country because of the things we have been telling the people that we would do. If we had to deal with the land, the first thing we should do would be to hand it back to the British people, and no doubt hon. Members opposite would have the same objection to the British getting the land as they had to the Germans. I will confine myself to housing, and what, we would do is that we would grant the local authorities power to take over, for the purpose of building sites, any suitable land in their area at the price at which it stood in the valuation roll. That would not be asking very much. It would be merely asking that people should have a footing in their native land in the way of being provided with a site for a house, and no man, However good, virtuous, or influential, should be allowed to stand in the way of British people getting a site to provide them with
housing accommodationin their native land.
With regard to building materials, we would proceed to produce homes for heroes on exactly the same lines that you produced shells during the War. When we found ourselves confronted with all these trusts who controlled building materials, we would apply, as you had to apply during the War, the principles of Socialism, which were the salvation of the State in 1916, and many hon. Members opposite paid tribute to Socialism during those terrible years of 1916 and 1917. If we were faced with the same conditions that faced the present Government, and if we had to find building materials, do you think we, as representing a freedom-loving British people, would lie down to a few people who controlled trusts and combines for building materials. We would proceed immediately, as you proceeded to provide shells, to produce light castings, cement and all the building materials required to build houses in those large national factories. In the production of those materials we should employ the million of people who are standing idle at the street corners, and whom you are paying money for doing nothing. We would set those people to producing goods.
In those large national factories we would produce raw materials at cost price. There would be no huge dividends for capitalists, no huge interests to pay to financiers. Our policy would not injure the nation but the small group who think they are the nation, and the small group who own the nation, and who exist as parasites on the nation. We would interfere with them, and we would get the materials for the construction of houses at cost price. The cost price would be the wages of the workers who produce the materials and nothing more, and any people who wished to share in the national wealth will also have to share in the national production, having got these materials cheaply, we would supply them at cost price to the local authorities.
We would also give the local authorities power to get land and materials cheaply, and we would introduce a system of financial control that would enable the State and local authorities to use the
credit of the State and the local authorities to finance these schemes without the aid of private financiers at all. In that way we should deprive the people whom hon. Gentlemen opposite defend of the power to extract £66 per house from every family in the British Isles who require healthy housing accommodation. We would employ the 118,000 members of the building trades who are now walking about unemployed. We would do that and remove not merely unemployment, but also the terrible social conditions which were described by the hon. Member for the St. Rollox Division.

Major BURNIE: I would like to direct the attention of the House to the question of the ex-service men. They were promised a good deal, and the municipal corporations have done their best for them under the schemes of the late Government. They have built houses which cost £1,200 and £l,300 each. In my constituency land had to be bought at £650 per acre which was previously let as grazing land, and it was purchased at over 200 years' purchase. My hon. Friends who belong to the Labour party have a different solution of this question to that which I advocate, and they are all out for nationalisation. The hon. Member for the Shettleston Division (Mr. Wheatley) said they would produce the building materials in the same way as shells were produced in 1917. During that year I visited some men in hospital tents. I had to go to Scotland, and I passed through Gretna Green, and there I discovered that the workers were getting £8, £9, and £10 a week. They had a cinema, public houses, and schools all built of brick. The poor soldier's wife meantime was only getting 12s. 6d. a week. If that is the outcome of a system of nationalisation I, for one, do not want it. If we build bouses under any scheme of State factories the same abuses will creep in. We must depend to a very large extent on private enterprise. Those men who fought with me are entitled to have homes. The hon. Member who spoke opposite referred to the Small Dwellings Acquisition Act of 1889. I know that Act well. I tried to get it applied in Bootle. It is a permissive Act, and only one or two corporations have adopted it. It has a fatal drawback, in that the money lent to anyone under it is charged for at 1 per cent, above the rate for local loans. An ex-service man
cannot afford to pay 7 per cent, on the purchase price of his house. I would appeal to the Government to lend the money free of interest to the ex-service men, and let them make their bargains with the private builders. They will get houses at £300 or £400, and I will make the bargain for them if hon. Members on the Labour Benches cannot do so. Let the ex-soldier have his own house. Let him have a stake in the country for which he fought, and let the Government, instead of lending money to Austria, lend it to him, and leave him free to make his bargain with private enterprise. Thus the problem may be solved.

The SOLICITOR-GENERAL (Sir Thomas Inskip): It is an unfortunate fact, as several hon. Members have said, this evening, that there is no one better equipped here to make a statement as to the policy of the Government in connection with this important question. The Noble Lord the Member for Hastings (Lord E. Percy) was good enough to refer to the fact that on the last occasion almost upon which I addressed the House in the last Parliament, I ventured to make observations upon this question, and I very well remember that the then Minister of Health was good enough to characterise my few observations as a sentimental speech. Many hon. Members have addressed this House to-night from both sides, and everyone, I think, has spoken with the sympathy which everyone must feel for those who require houses and are unable to get them. It has been suggested by one hon. Member, and one only I believe, that mere expressions of sympathy are worse than useless. I do not take that view. I believe that if the matter is approached by all sections, by all parties, and by all Members of the House with the conviction that this question requires action and that steps must be taken by someone to provide houses, very soon a solution will be found. The evils which we deplore appear to me to be largely the result of the unawakened consciences of former generations on this question of housing, and to-day I believe happily there is no difference of opinion as to the profound nature of the problem and no quarrel as to its urgency.
The conditions of housing in our large cities can only be viewed by anyone aware of them with the most profound misgivings, and I believe, in spite of what one hon. Member has said as to our feelings
on this side of the House, there is a universal desire for a change. That feeling is not peculiar to private Members or to individual Members. It is one which is shared as much by the Government as by the most sincere believer in housing reform. There is no difference as to the existence of the difficulty. There may be, and there are, differences as to the remedies which must be applied, but I think it is fair to say that if the State can help to solve the housing problem by a well-considered scheme, it can hinder the solution of the housing problem by an ill-considered scheme.
Hon. Members will not expect from me this evening a declaration of policy upon extended lines. In addition to the defects from which I suffer as spokesman of the Government in the unavoidable absence of the Minister of Health, it is obvious that the Government has not had an opportunity of giving that full consideration to the problem which the circumstances require. I can only hope to state the general position and the lines upon which the consideration which has so far been possible by the Government has been given. Is it not fresh in the minds of all hon. Members that a great experiment was made four years ago I It was launched with great energy by those responsible for it. The utmost enthusiasm was shown by all who took part in it. There was, I would almost say, reckless expenditure by the State and by the municipalities in the hope of solving this problem. The result of the enormous outlay of public money was, I think every man will agree, a comparatively inadequate return in houses. I do not stay to discuss the reasons for the failure if failure it were, although my hon. Friend the Member for North St. Pancras (Mr. Lorden) gave reasons for thinking the responsibility for the failure was not all in one direction. I say nothing about that, or about any other cause for failure. But the fact is that after this immense expenditure of energy and money only something like 200,000 houses were produced and that justifies one in saying that the schemes did not meet the needs of the situation. The hon. Member for the Shettleston Division of Glasgow (Mr. Wheatley) suggested that there was never any intention of making that scheme a success. I beg leave to differ from him. I believe the opinion of every Member of the House,
with the exception of the hon. Member, is that there was a determination on the part of everyone to make the scheme successful. [HON. MEMBERS: "NO, no."] There is little good in entering into very-much detail upon what has happened in the past. It is sufficient for me to state the facts which I have stated, that the outlay which has committed the State to an expenditure of something over £9,000,000 a year for many years has resulted in the provision of a large number of houses it is true, but a number which, having regard to the needs of the country, is comparatively small.
While the State scheme held the field, there was at the same time a comparative submergence of private enterprise. The Government scheme held the field, and private enterprise took a back place. The Government's scheme has not solved the problem. The fact was that the late Government found it necessary to limit that scheme somewhere about June of last year, with the result that the total number of houses that will be provided under the schemes is just over 215,000, which, with another 3,000 dwellings that have been provided by the conversion of huts and hostels, will make something like 220,000 dwellings. I have called this a comparative failure, but from one point of view it is a tremendous result. The present position of these schemes is that 188,069 houses have actually been completed, or had been completed on 1st November. Of the 176,000 houses to which the local authority and public utility schemes were limited, 11,382 have not yet been begun, and work is proceeding on 18,847, so that there are something over 30,000 houses upon which work still remains to be done.
The question in which the House is so closely interested is, what is to be the future? We have listened to a number of eloquent speeches, full of information as to the sorrowful conditions which prevail in many of our cities, and I, for one, am not going to shut my eyes to the fact that hon. Members opposite who speak upon this question speak from a sorrowful experience which others of us do not possess. None of us have doubted the truth of those stories; none of us have attempted to deny the urgency of the problem. What we have looked for is assistance as to the lines upon which the
Government should deal with the problem. The hon. Member for Shettleston (Mr. Wheatley) informed us that, if he and his party were returned to power, they would do something. The hon. Member in time will learn that man cannot live by promises alone, and that he must descend a little more closely to earth and put his proposals into a little more practical form before this problem will be solved. The hon. Member's suggestions were limited to the proposal, in the first place, that land should be acquired at the value at which it stood on the valuation roll, and secondly, that State factories should be established at which every form of material should be made by the State, even though that involved the destruction of private enterprise. The only comment I would make upon these two suggestions is that while the revolution—I do not mean a civil revolution, but the industrial revolution—that would be involved in their adoption was being carried out, the people would still be waiting for the houses to be built; and the urgency of this problem is the serious matter which deserves our consideration. I think the hon. Member for Blaydon (Mr. Whiteley) made the same proposal, namely, that national factories should be established to provide materials in order to erect houses. The establishment of national factories, at any rate, is not a solution which this Government can adopt, and I do not believe it to be a measure which would assist in the rapid solution of this urgent question.
10.0 P.M.
We have had a number of other and, I venture to think, more practical suggestions from other hon. Members. The hon. Member for Derby (Mr. C. Roberts) suggested that a system of lighter taxation upon houses and financial assistance for the encouragement of private enterprise would assist in solving the problem. The hon. Member for South Edinburgh (Sir S. Chapman), in a most interesting maiden speech, suggested that the use of the Small Dwellings Acquisition Act would help to solve the problem. These, of course, are all proposals which deserve and will secure consideration at the earliest possible moment. The hon. Member for North Camberwell (Mr. Ammon) made yet another proposal, and it is one that has occupied considerable attention in this long-drawn-out discussion. He suggested that the large sum—
I think he stated it to amount to £90,000,000–at present expended in Unemployment Benefit, should be devoted to paying wages to persons in the building trade, who might provide the necessary houses. I think that a moment's reflection will show how impossible of adoption any such proposal is. The money that corresponds to that £90,000,000 would be diverted from the Unemployment Insurance Scheme, and it would involve the practical abandonment of the operation of the Unemployment Insurance Acts for the benefit of a small section of the community. We cannot solve the housing question by scrapping the machinery of the Unemployment Insurance Acts, and, therefore, I feel bound to set aside that proposal.
The hon. Member then made another suggestion, the full import of which I was not able to gather. His suggestion was that, inasmuch as there is a great deal of money in the country—as can be seen by the fact that gilt-edged securities are subscribed for with great avidity by the wealthy classes—if people will not put their money into housing schemes the money should be taken. I was not able to gather whether the hon. Member suggested that the money should be seized and no interest paid upon it, or in what precise way the money should be used. If it is, as I hear an hon. Member suggest, our old friend the capital levy, this is not the time or the place to discuss it.
So far as I am aware, those are the proposals which have been laid before the House this evening, with one exception. The hon. Member for West Middlesbrough (Mr. T. Thomson has made an elaborate calculation which, I am sure, he will forgive me for saying was much too elaborate for me to follow or to examine with my limited opportunities this evening. As I understood it, the hon. Member suggested that a very large sum could be borrowed by the Government and devoted to assisting municipalities to provide money on easy terms in order to build the necessary houses; and he estimated, upon his calculation, that the cost would be something like £2,500,000 or £3,000,000 a year to the State. I am not for a moment going to suggest that the hon. Member ever speaks on this question without thought and consideration, for I know how much his sympathy is enlisted and how much thought he has given to the matter. I can only say that his proposal
will be considered and examined by those who will have greater opportunities and more time to examine it than I have been able to give this evening. I am bound to say that the only' statement the Government can make at present is that houses can, in their opinion, be more advantageously provided by those whose business it is to build houses than by the State. The Government is most anxious that private enterprise, which when all is said and done has provided large numbers of houses in the past, should be encouraged to develop its great resources. The consideration which the Government will give to this problem is along those lines. They will consider whether any action on the part of the Government, including possibly the extension of existing provisions under which private builders can borrow money at reasonable rates, will assist in that direction.
There are already signs of revival in private enterprise in building. Local authorities are showing a readiness to undertake building without State aid. Thirty-five local authorities have already undertaken to build houses without State assistance, and another 60 local authorities are considering proceeding on those lines, and although such measures as these are necessarily in their infancy at present I think it is a hopeful indication that there are resources which have not yet been developed and that encouragement along these lines will serve now to develop them.
One thing is quite certain in the view of the Government. It is that the continuation of the present system, under which the liability of the local authorities is fixed at a penny rate while the Government contribution is unlimited, cannot be contemplated. It has already involved the State in a charge of £9,000,000 a year, extending over a long period. Whether any scheme under which the Government is to provide financial assistance will offer better hope still remains for consideration by the Government. I ought to say a word about the cost of building. The failure of the scheme, if failure it was, was largely due to the enormous cost of building. It is satisfactory to report that the cost of building has fallen very considerably since the decision of the late Government last June. The last tenders which have been received for three-roomed houses are at a
figure of £297. I will not say that is a figure which is the economic level at which it is possible that private enterprise can build houses without any assistance, but, at any rate, it begins to approach an economic level. The Government are hopeful, if their present decision is adhered to, and they are able still further to encourage private enterprise, that a movement in the same direction will be experienced.
A great deal has been said, naturally, to-night about the clearance of slum areas. I cannot help thinking that this question of the slums buiks, from one point of view, more largely in the minds of hon. Members even than the provision of new houses. I do not mean to say that the two are not intimately connected. They are. But what has made such a grave impression on hon. Members opposite and on this side of the House is the existence of the festering sores, as one hon. Member described them, in the midst of the city. The industrial revolution of the last 100 years allowed slums to grow up while men were so busy with other schemes, and with the collection of wealth, that the duty of the State and of the individual in connection with housing was forgotten. The conscience is awakened, but the facts remain, and these slums in our cities are in existence to-day. [Interruption.]

Mr. SPEAKER: The hon. Member for Glasgow (Mr. Kirkwood) must really cease his habit of continually interrupting speakers. It is impossible to have proper debate.

Mr. KIRKWOOD: I wish to correct—

Mr. SPEAKER: I will listen to the hon. Member if he will address the Chair in a proper way.

Mr. KIRKWOOD: The correction I wish to make is that I do not come from Glasgow. I represent Dumbarton and Clyde Bank.

Mr. SPEAKER: I hope for the credit of Dumbarton and Clyde Bank the hon. Member will restrain himself more.

Sir T. INSKIP: The difficulty is that until houses are provided in numbers adequate to house the population in a slum area little progress will be made in dealing with the area. Our first duty in dealing with a slum area is to erect new houses, which will put the local authority
in a position to demolish the worst part of the unhealthy area and so make progress throughout the whole of the slum. The acquisition of the property is, of course, a necessary step. One hon. Member suggested that there was some impediment placed by the Ministry of Health in the acquisition of these areas in order that the necessary clearance might be effected. If there has been any such impediment, I am quite sure there is no desire on the part of the Ministry of Health really to delay the acquisition of the areas. The statutory powers that are given are most drastic. I do not think those who know these areas would admit for a moment that they receive the compensation under the Acts of Parliament to which they think they are entitled, and the desire of the Ministry of Health is to give all possible assistance to local authorities as soon as what are called clearing houses are provided to clear these areas and to put into force the drastic powers which are permissible under the Act of Parliament.

Mr. LANSBURY: That is exactly what the Ministry of Health has not allowed us to do at Poplar.

Sir T. INSKIP: The hon. Member, of course, will not expect me to deal with a specific case of which I have received no notice and no information, and if the facts warrant the criticism which the hon. Member has passed upon them, no doubt the attention which he has called to them will be salutary. He will not take it from me that the facts he has stated, and the inferences he has drawn from the facts, are admitted. The desire of this Government is to carry out and extend the policy initiated by the late Minister of Health, which will assist local authorities in first of all providing the clearing houses into which to put the population—and hon. Members know how difficult it is to get people out even of these distressfully miserable houses—they will do everything to enforce the powers which local authorities have to acquire some area and to clear it. In that way the area or areas will be further improved or possibly sold for other purposes and houses erected on some other convenient site. One hon. Member suggested that private enterprise left the question of slum clearances because there was no profit in it. I do not for a moment believe that that is the reason. The reason
why private enterprise is not able to deal with the clearance of slum areas is that private enterprise is not able to enforce its will either upon the owners of the property or upon the persons who live in the property. It is necessary, therefore, for the State in this connection to intervene and come to the assistance of private enterprise, whether carried on by private persons or municipalities, before anything can be achieved.
It will encourage the House to know that there has been considerable response by local authorities to the assistance which the Government is prepared to give. The Government has undertaken to provide a sum which for the moment is not to exceed £200,000 every year towards the deficiency of local authorities in the matter of slum areas. In London considerable schemes have been proposed by the London County Council, including the Brady Street area, which will involve a loss of not less than £100,000 a year, upon the undertaking of the Government to contribute £50,000 a year towards the loss.

Lieut.-Colonel FREMANTLE: For how long is that loss to continue?

Sir T. INSKIP: It is for a period of 60 years, in which it is necessary to provide the interest and the sinking fund.

Mr. LANSBURY: How much of this will go to compensate the people who make money out of these wretched slums?

Sir T. INSKIP: I am not able to give, and my hon. Friend will not expect me to be able to give, the figures upon such short notice. Whether the money that goes to the property owners is considerable or not, the great thing is to get on with the clearances of these slums, and the steps which the Government are taking in providing financial assistance and in encouraging the local, authorities to put into operation their powers has induced the local authorities to make a start. In addition to the London County Council, 56 local authorities have undertaken schemes or are in actual negotiation for schemes of the same character. Hon. Members will understand that the real first cost of this clearance of slum areas is involved in the provision of the clearing houses which have to be built. It is the outlay upon these which really involves
the loss. When the clearing houses have been built, a particular area can be taken, the property can be developed, if it is suitable, for business premises, possibly at a figure which will enable the local authority to make a profit, and with the sum realised to extend and develop the clearance of another slum area. So, by a happy accumulation of work, schemes will progress once they have been set on foot by the provision jointly between the Government and the local authorities of the loss which is involved. That is a considerable start. I will not say for the moment that it is so great a step that any of us can feel happy in thinking that the whole problem is solved, but it is a considerable start and the first step towards complete satisfaction. I am not sure that in connection with the subject of slum clearance I can say anything more.
Upon the whole problem I am only able to say that the Government are giving it the close and careful consideration which it demands. The question of housing reform strikes very deeply into the nation's life, but its solution depends at least as much upon the resources and energy of private persons as upon the State. Put the power of the initiative of the State as high as you like, in the end you have to realise that the resources of the State are limited. I know that some hon. Members think that they are unlimited. They are not. They have been already pledged to an extent which, perhaps, few people realise in connection with the efforts which have been already made on this great question. Lest we may procure for ourselves an advance even in this great matter by the destruction of the wealth upon which the prosperity of the country ultimately depends, and upon which the increase of employment depends, we must be very cautious as to the amount which the State can provide, even for so good an object as housing, and if it be the fact that private enterprise, and the great resources of private persons and municipalities can do as successfully as the State, and more economically than the State, the work of providing houses, then we shall achieve our purpose, and we shall not further mortgage our limited resources. It is in this hope that the Government are considering the question. In spite of what hon. Members say the Government will
give the most sympathetic consideration to every single proposal made from these benches in this Debate. They are considering every proposal, but they will proceed upon the lines of private enterprise which with the assistance and encouragement and good will of the State may be able to solve the problem. If all parties co-operate with head and heart I am sure that we may, in the course of a short time, hope to see happier conditions in our big cities.

EX-SBEVICE MEN (MENTAL CASES).

Mr. LAVVSON: I am sorry that I feel called upon to intervene in this Debate, which has been extremely interesting as well as informing, and has been, perhaps, one of the most valuable Debates that have ever taken place in this House on the Housing Question. But I want to raise at this stage a question of the ex-service men who have been put in asylums and who, by order of the Pensions Ministry have been made what is known as "mental paupers." I should not at this stage have raised the question but for the unsatisfactory and unhappy answer of the Minister of Pensions on Monday last. As one who has kept in touch with pensions affairs in this country, I was astounded at the position of the Pensions Ministry on this question. Even, in spite of the fact that I had been very much dissatisfied with its conduct and administration during the past 12 months, I certainly did not expect that any Pensions Ministry would have been guilty of such a decision in reference to the 700 men who are now concerned. Most hon. Members will agree that during the Election, and since that decision, few things have moved this country to such a sense of shame as the decision of the Pensions Ministry in respect of these men
The country has never been satisfied with the treatment of mentally affected ex-service men, even in the ordinary asylums. That you should have had men who had gone through all the horrors of the late War and had been rendered insane, and then had been sent into asylums to what was practically a living death, was bad enough, but that you should have taken a certain proportion of these men and placed them upon the guardians and labelled them as mental
paupers, was a thing which filled the country with shame That was well illustrated by expressions of feeling in all quarters of the House on Monday last. It was remarkable evidence of the feeling of the country that the right hon. Member for West Birmingham (Mr. A. Chamberlain), the Leader of the House in the Government which was responsible for the decision, almost on the first day of the meeting of the new Government asked the present Government to alter that decision. That marked the public indignation very well indeed. I wish to congratulate the Minister of Pensions on his accession to an office of which he has had a wide experience. While he will get criticism from this side of the House, and sometimes heavy criticism, at least it will be criticism which will tend to help him to salvage these wrecks of the War. We all have a common interest in that direction. The right hon. and gallant Gentleman, in his answer, said that there were not 700 of these cases. I do not think it matters whether there are 700 or only 70. The fact remains that the nation feels a sense of shame because of the thing that has happened. But the Minister of Pensions tried to defend the decision. The right hon. Member for West Birmingham asked the Government to treat this as a matter of sympathy, and said that there were only a few cases. The Minister replied that to admit these cases was to open the door wide and to violate the Royal Warrant. He went on to say:
I have myself examined some of these cases, and they have been clear cases of men who have been for a long period certified as insane"—
Mark what follows, because I do not base the case upon sympathy at all, but on the right of these men to a pension and to consideration, because they were taken into the Army as fit for service—
and who having been well at the moment were enlisted by mistake.
Supposing it to be the case that these men or a certain proportion of them had been in asylums, and had come out again and were well for the time being. The fact remains that they were taken into the Army, and very often they did not want to go there. [Laughter.] It is not a laughing matter at all. I was there, and I say they did not want to go.

Captain A. EVANS: I quite agree with the hon. Member.

Mr. LAWSON: Very often the idiocy of some of the authorities drove people of that kind into the Army and compelled them to join against their will. I know men who had been deprived of limbs before the War who were sent for time and time again to be examined. Some most shameful cases of roping men into the Army could be given here to-night. These men were well for the moment and were taken in. The very fact that in many cases the State compelled them to come in, is a reason why they should be considered. I ask the House to face this matter. We all know cases of people who have been in asylums for a time and then have been brought out quite normal again. We all know of cases where such people have been all right and have been good citizens all the rest of their lives. We know perfectly well, however, that if you put these people into conditions which are abnormal, they will return to their former state. That was recognised by the War Office Committee which inquired into shell shock and which discovered, practically, that shell shock was not shell shock at all. This Committee pointed out that a large number of people who never heard shell firing had been troubled with shell shock. I do not wonder at that. I remember as a man of 34 years of age who had never ridden a horse before, the first time I was put into a riding school at Woolwich. They put me on a mule. It was said: "Join the Army and see life." I saw more life in ten minutes on that occasion than I had seen in all the previous years of my life. When I had finished with that little lot, I am not sure that I had not a species of shell shock. It was clearly demonstrated to this Committee that people were subject to neurotic diseases and what was termed shell shock who had never even been at the War. This is what the Committee stated:
With the extension of voluntary enlistment, and, afterwards, the introduction of conscription, it was discovered that nervous disorders, neurosis and hysteria, which had appeared in a small degree in the Regular Army, were becoming astoundingly numerous from causes other than, shock caused by the bursting of high explosives. It was observed, in fact, that these were perpetually recurring, although the patients had not suffered from commotional disturbance of the nervous system caused by the bursting of shells. It became apparent that numerous case*; of shell shock wore coming under the notice of the medical authorities, where the evidence indicated that the patients had not even been within hearing of shell bursts
On the other hand it became abundantly plain to the medical profession that in very many cases the change from civil life, brought about by enlistment and physical training, was sufficient to cause neurasthenic and hysteric symptoms.
You take a normal man from civil life into the ordinary routine of the Army, especially under War-time conditions. They were very strong-nerved men who could hear the voice of some of the sergeant-majors—who had to thank God they were made sergeant-majors because of their voices—and not he troubled with neurasthenia. I want to make that point quite clear, that normal men, according to this Government Committee, were subject to neurasthenia and various forms of hysteria by the very fact that they were taken into the Army and subjected to Army conditions, and who that has served in the ranks does not know that that was true? Take an average man from civil life, let him be as strong as you like, it is a new experience. The right hon. Gentleman says that these cases were examined by the medical boards.
I am not going to criticise the medical boards here to-night, though I shall take an opportunity later on of saying something about these medical boards, as I have before, but how could the medical boards deal with cases like these? The whole thing is absurd. They could not give a decision upon this matter unless the men could tell them exactly the conditions under which they had to exist. The men themselves, if a true judgment has to be given, ought to give evidence, 'but these men are not in a mental condition to do it, and so it seems to me that the medical boards themselves were not by any means in a position to deal with these cases.
I feel that this decision is one that is the result of, shall I call it, the mechanical administration which became characteristic of the Pensions Ministry during the past 12 months. I am not going to leave it even at that point. I think the Pensions Ministry rather robbed itself of that experience and that sympathy which were extremely valuable to it in this work when it broke away from the local committees, but I do not wish to pursue that question. I want to say that it was impossible for the medical boards to arrive at a true decision concerning these men. If it be true, as the right hon. Gentleman said, even if you take the extreme cases, that they were mentally
affected, that then they got well, end that then they were taken into the Army, both common experience and the experience of the Government's own Committee ought to prompt him, at any rate, to say that no medical board, and no man, could give a decision in cases of thi6 nature, adverse to the men. I want to fortify myself also by the position taken up by this House in support of the right hon. Member for West Birmingham. I think we ought not to run any danger of making a mistake in this matter. I do not believe that there is a single hon. Member in this House who dare go to his constituents and say that he has voted in any Division in favour of the confirmation of this Order of the Ministry of Pensions. I do not think that there is, but I do not want to leave the matter here. We want the Ministry of Pensions to give a different decision, and we want a finer spirit shown. We want to make a general cooperation for the purpose of getting the Pensions Ministry to come to a very definite decision, an early decision, which will give some satisfaction on this question, whatever contests and contentions they may have about other matters.
I want to say, finally, that taking the general mental cases, I think an early opportunity ought to be taken to give expression to a promise that the right hon. Gentleman gave, I think, during the Election—I wish the Election had gone on a little bit longer; we should then have been all right in promises. I understand he gave a promise that he would consider the possibility of getting separate homes and giving special and separate treatment for mental cases of ex-service men. They have a special type of trouble, and I have not the slightest doubt that their special mental diseases would in due time reward those who were using their special skill upon them in special places by recovering from those diseases. In any case, I hope the right hon. Gentleman is going to give more attention to that general question, and whatever he does, I hope he will give a satisfactory answer to-night, in order that we may remove a blot upon the nation. I have not said, and I am not going to say, anything about the cost to the boards of guardians. I do not believe the boards of guardians are so much troubled about the cost as they are about the shame of it. I am not going to allow any mercenary matter to enter into it, and
I hope the Minister of Pensions will not either, and that he will make a satisfactory statement to-night upon this question.

The MINISTER of PENSIONS (Major Tryon): I should like to take the first opportunity I have of thanking the hon. Member for the way in which he has brought forward his case, and, if I may say so, I am grateful to him for another reason, and it is this. This is a subject on which the whole House feels very deeply, and it is a subject on which it is better that the House should be as fully informed as possible by a Debate, rather than by question and answer, which make it impossible for either those criticising or those defending the Ministry to make the case clear to the House at Question Time. When the hon. Gentleman just now asked me here and now as Pensions Minister at once to give a decision on these particular cases which I hold in my hand—and these men, I must say, are not men who have been overseas; not one of these cases has been overseas—that I should here and now decide as Pensions Minister that they should receive pensions, then I am bound to say I have no power myself to give pensions, but I am absolutely bound by the Warrant which was brought in by a previous Minister—I make no attack on any party; he docs not belong to my own—who decided that these pensions should only run for one year after the termination of the War. Therefore, to make a change legislation is required, the Warrant must be changed, and the whole foundation of entitlement for pensions, which has received the universal support of every party in this House during three different Governments, must be fundamentally changed.
The principle is that we compensate men for disablement due to the War, and the Ministry must not, and I hope never will, be asked to compensate for disablements which are not due to the War. That is the principle which every party has always accepted. If the hon. Member will accept that as the foundation of our policy, I will proceed with the individual cases. The individual cases may be defined as examples of the 700. We do not know how large that number may be, but I am personally going over them myself with every sympathy and with every desire, as far as possible within the powers granted by Parliament, to
accept these cases as due to the War. Here are one or two cases. The hon. Member will not think me lacking in appreciation of the kind way he spoke. He alluded to the "horrors of war" as a justification for the extension of benefit to these cases. The "horrors of war" do not apply in the slightest degree to some of the cases that I have here. Here is a case—one of the 700. This man was enlisted as a boy in 1921, after the War had been over for three years, so that the horrors of war seem hardly to apply. He had only been three weeks in the Army when it was found that he had been suffering from fits of excitement and hysteria before enlistment. The hon. Member talked about mistakes. Everyone should admit mistakes after they have been made. They were made. Here is a case of a man who was twice in the asylum before enlistment. He served for two weeks before the mistake was found out. Here is a case of an epileptic. He was examined for admission to the Army by his own doctor, who knew he had fits and he was not allowed into the Army. The man wanted to enlist, and so he went to another doctor who did not know him. At that moment he looked well and strong, and the doctor, not knowing his history, passed him, and he was admitted to the Army. Within a short apace of time he was found out and was discharged from the Army. A case like this is entirely outside the principles of the warrant laid down by the authority of the House, and I believe it was the right principle, and it would be against the decision of this House, and absolutely outside my authority as Pensions Minister, to say that a man who had fits before he went into the Army is to be treated as a case attributable to the War because he happened to be well at the moment he was examined.
If you are going to admit an unlimited number of people of this sort, and of those who have spent a few days in the Army, you are going to break down the pensions system as it was broken down in America, and we shall have innumerable cases who have no just claim. It will also be an injustice to the ex-service men whose pensions may thereby be in jeopardy. The expenditure will be increased, the system will break down, and the deserving ex-service
men will suffer. Here is another case—and I am bound to state where things are wrong—of a man who had been three times in the asylum before the War. By a mistake he was admitted into the Army. He was, when found out, turned out. We have no power to grant a pension in such a case. Here is an epileptic case of much the same kind. The man had had epilepsy for years. The case was rather like the other one. He was admitted to the Army for a short time, but did not go overseas, and was discharged from the Army because of an ailment which he had had constantly for years and years before the War.
I should like to put the question of illness before enlistment and the case of aggravation due to War service as clearly and in as friendly a way as possible, particularly to hon. Members opposite. There are many who hold that that is one of the devices of the Pensions Ministry for evading responsibility. [HON. MEMBERS: "Hear, hear!"] I note that some hon. Members think so. It is the exact opposite. When men were admitted to the Army in the lower classifications, and many of them were so admitted—all the men who came into the Army were not A1–they were admitted for light work and special duty. I know the case of a club-footed man who was made worse. In such a case if the man becomes worse, the State admit aggravation. That is the arrangement under which the State accepts the whole liability—not merely the 20 or 30 per cent, by which the man was disabled by the War, but the whole liability—because the disability was made worse by his service. In the same way the State accepts its liability for a man with a weak mind if he was made worse. If that illness has been aggravated by service, he gets the whole pension. It is an acceptance by the State of the whole liability, when admittedly only a portion of that liability is the State's.
May I say why I so profoundly regret that we had to discuss this matter at Question Time and not in a general Debate? These 700 cases are being reviewed—I am going through them myself —and we are considering the whole question to see if we can find any way out in view of the general feeling of the House.
Do not let me, by that, give any promise that we have yet found a solution, because under the terms of the Warrant it is not in my power, without legislation, to grant pensions to anybody when the disability is not due to the War. I regret that this matter was discussed at Question Time, because, while we are talking about these 700 men—I give that figure not as an exact statement of numbers, but as an indication of the men to whom I refer—what I really think is dear to the hearts of Members opposite and to the House is the case of the men who have lost their mental balance through the War, such as of men wounded in the head, whose insanity is unquestionably due to the War. These are men whose cases are unlike those about which the whole discussion took place yesterday, namely, cases of men who have been for two or three weeks in the Army in England and one or two of them since the War was over. What does matter is the case of the men in mental hospitals now due to the War.

Mr. LUNN: Does the right hon. Gentleman wish to convey to the House that none of these 700 men served overseas, but that every one of them had been proved to be suffering from imbecility or lunacy before they joined the Army?

Major TRYON: Almost the whole, but not all these men have not been overseas. Where they have been overseas we, as a Ministry, take that as a strong presumption in favour of the men's case. What does matter is the case of those 6,000 men in the mental hospitals. That is a case of extraordinary difficulty. As a Ministry, we have not only the task of paying pensions, but we are responsible for the sick and wounded in the Great War. We are, at this moment, saddled with the responsibility —and I think hon. Members will be astonished at the figure—under which every day throughout the year, on an average, over 100,000 people come up for treatment at the cost of the Ministry. Those are cases of sickness which we admit and knew are due to the War. That is going on now, and of all the cases that we have to care for, and the difficulties that this Ministry has to face, none caused my predecessor in office or
is causing myself more anxiety than the problem of the mental instability and neurological patients. Our position is that we put them in hospitals. We have been specially training for this service a large number of medical officers to attend them, because, after the War, there were not enough medical officers to deal with this extraordinarily difficult case of men who had lost their will power. Our policy as a Ministry has been to hold on to these men to the very last moment. Of course, it would not be wise for me to say that we have broken the law, but it is quite true to say that we have gone to the utmost limits without breaking the law in order to keep these men out of the asylum. But when the moment comes that they are certified under the law, then they must pass into the great asylums, because we are not then allowed to keep them in our hospitals. But even when they get into the asylums we treat them, not as pauper patients, but as private patients.
I thank all parties in the House for the valuable aid given by the representatives of every party in the House on the Departmental Committee which dealt with this question, and I also wish to thank the ex-service men who sat on that Committee. This Departmental Committee recommended that we should set apart a separate wing in each asylum for the ex-service men. I wish to point out that if you cut off a wing in those asylums, you get this difficulty. In every asylum these eases have to be variously classified. These are, for instance, men who are very dangerous and some who are quite harmless and still certified. This involves about 10 different separations. If you cut off a wing in these asylums, then you have to reproduce all those separate gradations and separations, and that makes it most difficult to administer.
The new Government, realising the difficulty of this question, made an announcement. It is that they are prepared to go into this question to see if one or two special mental hospitals could be set up for the ex-service men. I know there are difficulties. One is that the relations of these men may prefer to keep their sick near them, and if you put up one or two big central hospitals it would be difficult for the relatives to visit these men. On the other hand, if you have a separate wing
for them, it would be difficult to have the separations and gradations I have referred to. I have discussed this question with the members of the British Legion, and we have again found that it is a case of extreme difficulty to deal with. The real problem is not the one which came up at Question Time yesterday. Our difficulty is the problem of the 6,000 men in the asylums for whom this Ministry has accepted responsibility.

It being Eleven of the Clock, the Motion for the Adjournment of the House lapsed, without Question put.

ADJOURNMENT.

Resolved, "That this House do now adjourn."—[Colonel Gibbs.]

Adjourned accordingly at Eleven o'Clock.